Wall Street Journal

 The Dark Side of Shen Yun The popular Chinese dance troupe has toured all over the world. But young performers described a culture of untreated injuries and emotional manipulation. By James Barron Aug. 19, 2024 We’ll look at findings from The New York Times’s investigation of the Shen Yun dance troupe.  The dance group Shen Yun sends troupes of Chinese dancers swirling in colorful costumes to cities like New York, Paris, Toronto and Taipei. Shen Yun’s mission is more than entertainment: The shows amplify the anti-Communist message of Falun Gong, a religious movement that the Chinese Communist Party has tried to stamp out. Shen Yun has been led in exile by Falun Gong’s founder, Li Hongzhi, from a 400-acre compound in upstate New York, where many of the performers live and train. What Shen Yun audiences may not have realized was that offstage the performers paid a price in untreated injuries and emotional abuse. A New York Times investigation found that Shen Yun routinely discouraged th

 New York Times：Lifting the Curtain of Shen Yun to Reveal a Dark Side Two New York Times reporters spent about 10 months investigating claims that the dance group had emotionally manipulated young performers and left many of their injuries untreated. Advertisements for Shen Yun, the traditional Chinese dance troupe, can be seen throughout New York City and elsewhere, though they don’t indicate its link to a spiritual movement.Credit...  The New York Times By Nicole Hong For an article about Shen Yun, Nicole Hong, along with her colleague Michael Rothfeld, interviewed more than 80 people, examined hundreds of pages of records and reviewed secret recordings made from inside the group’s guarded headquarters in upstate New York. Aug. 23, 2024 The posters intrigued me, but I never really gave them a second thought. Then, in October, my Metro desk colleague Michael Rothfeld received a tip: Someone familiar with the inner workings of Shen Yun wanted to share information about the group’s oper

 The Scam at the Heart of the Mysterious Epoch Times JUNE 7, 2024 By Matt Stieb, Intelligencer staff writer Five years ago, a niche newspaper called The Epoch Times made a big bet on Donald Trump. The outlet, associated with the exiled Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, never gained too many readers by handing out its free broadside condemning the policies of the Chinese Communist Party. But when Trump came into office, its editors found a hitmaker: pro-Trump stories and conspiracist clickbait. In 2019, as his reelection campaign warmed up, The Epoch Times increased its efforts to cover Trump favorably. It also extended its ad budget, spending more on pro-Trump advertising on Facebook than any group except the campaign itself. The paper was eventually banned from Facebook for trying to obscure its pro-Trump ad buys, but the bet paid off. The Epoch Times was scoring interviews with Cabinet members. Former Trump advisers such as Steve Bannon were teaming up with its parent media comp