The Epoch Times 2023 Annual Gala, held in Newport Beach, California, celebrated the newspaper’s success Oct. 28 during a four hour-long event with special guests, loyal fans, and employees to inspire hope for the future of journalism and connect with a shared appreciation for American traditional values.
The evening featured a conversation with political commentator Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist, military historian, renowned author, and keynote speaker for the night who delivered a powerful message to the audience.
Before his speech on “Remedies to American Decline,” Mr. Hanson jokingly referenced The Epoch Times staff—with much of the founding crew coming from China and other countries—as an example of how those born in the land of the free now take it for granted.
“I was trying to think of how to formulate a concise 20-minute talk about American decline, and I thought, oh my gosh, the most patriotic paper in the United States is run by the most patriotic citizens, and none of them were born in the United States,” he said. “Why do people that come over here believe more in America than we do?”
The Epoch Times, now with coverage in 36 countries and in 22 languages, employs staff from all over the world including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Australia, India, Czech Republic, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Vietnam, New Zealand, Ireland, Romania, and more, all with a devotion to reviving traditional American values through truthful reporting.
Veteran journalist, editor, and producer for The Epoch Times and host of NTD’s “International Reporters Roundtable,” Cindy Drukier, who is from Canada, touched on the same point during her own speech to those in attendance.
She said to preserve our freedom, sometimes “it takes people coming sometimes from outside the United States to the land of freedom to see that there are problems here that need fixing.”
Ms. Drukier, who joined the company in 2005, has also been the lead trainer of The Epoch Times’ journalism program, which was founded in 2018 and has graduated 80 journalists in person and around 300 remotely.
The program, which was named the New York School of Professional Journalism in September and is available to Epoch Times interns, looks to enhance recent journalism school graduates in best traditional journalistic practices—especially knowing the difference between fact and opinion—which Ms. Drukier said can be difficult for today’s young reporters.
“They’ve been led down a bad path by the journalism school they came out of or by watching the mainstream media. ... At Epoch Times and our sister media NTD News we have a very hard wall between facts and opinion. It’s OK to have both, but you have to have a hard wall in between them and label it as such,” she said.
Mr. Hanson, during his speech, shifted some of the blame for a relaxed educational system to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs now taking a stronghold in higher education, with some universities admitting students based on race or gender rather than academic performance, and professors being forced to follow DEI focused curriculum.
Fourth-Largest Newspaper
Now, the fourth-largest newspaper by subscription count in the United States, reaching millions of people every day, next on the horizon for the Epoch Times is a Spanish-language edition coming soon.General manager for Southern California and host of Epoch TV’s “California Insider,” Siyamak Khorrami, spoke briefly about the expansion.
He said as someone who has spent time living in Mexico, he recognizes strong upright values in the Hispanic community which aren’t reflected or represented in American media.
Feedback from Fans
Rosemarie Smith, CEO and President of Newport Beach-based furniture store Systems Source, said during the event she appreciates how The Epoch Times delivers news in an informational and positive way, which she said separates it from other media.“When people have the facts, they can make the decisions. ... I can make a good decision if I have the right information, and that’s what I think The Epoch Times does in such a positive way, [reaching] people that are kind of on the border [politically], that don’t have all the information,” she said.
Besides politics, The Epoch Times offers content on health, entertainment, arts and culture, science, technology, and more.
Elaine Moreira, a longtime subscriber and steel trader of 31 years from Fairfield, California, said she discovered the paper through a sample copy in her mailbox. She said she became interested after seeing news reporting with “common sense,” which, she said, has been lost in the “biased” mainstream media.
“There’s no more common sense in anything, so I ordered a subscription, and I started reading it. ... At the beginning it was a real small paper, but everything in there made sense, and nobody else was reporting on it,” she told The Epoch Times.
Michael Brown, a retired aerospace engineer and project manager with more than 40 years in the industry, said he also received his first paper in the mail several years ago and really enjoys the different programs available on Epoch TV.
He said his favorites are “American Thought Leaders” with Jan Jekielek and “Facts Matter” with Roman Balmakov, but enjoys them all.
“I really liked not only the newspaper itself but also the content creators, especially Jan Jekielek. ... He is just amazing with the style and depth of the interviews that he does,” he said.
John Moorlach, a former Orange County Supervisor, state senator, and Orange County’s treasurer for 12 years, said he enjoys The Epoch Times’ coverage of world news and reporting on topics other media ignore.
“I seem to get more information from the Epoch Times on the world stage than I do from local papers, but I also get more balance and more of what the competitors wouldn’t even touch,” he said.
He said other major media outlets have a slanted view.
“Thanks for giving us this balance and really thanks for giving us the truth, because we’re not getting that from the mainstream media. We’re getting a liberal bias,” he said.
Mr. Moorlach said recent Los Angeles Times headlines have read more like an article from the Babylon Bee, a satire online news site.
Birth of The Epoch Times
The publication’s story dates to 2000, a year after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched a nationwide persecution against the spiritual discipline Falun Gong, which includes meditative exercises and moral teachings centered on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.By 1999, the practice had attracted an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents in mainland China, and its popularity was perceived by the CCP as a threat to its authoritarian control, according to the New York-based nonprofit Falun Dafa Information Center.
John Tang, the founder of The Epoch Times, learned about the brutal events taking place in mainland China, including hundreds of thousands enduring persecution for their beliefs, but he said Western media was amplifying CCP propaganda.
He decided to start a newspaper in an Atlanta, Georgia, basement to cover CCP’s human rights abuses. It’s now available in over 30 countries.
“He started this paper to give a voice to those people that didn’t have anybody talking for them,” Mr. Khorrami said previously. “But throughout the years we grew to the fourth-largest paper in the country. We cherish the value that this country has. ... We are here to promote those values, we are here to bring people together, and we are here to make this a better place.”
