The US Justice Department confirmed (July 6) that China Daily’s disclosure submitted to the Justice Department for the time period between November 2016 and April 2020, had revealed that the CCP paid US$ 19 million to some major media houses like the New York Times and Washington Post. Among the major outlets named in the documents are, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times. NYT is said to have received US$ 50,000, while The Washington Post was paid close to US$ 4.6 million. The lion’s share of the payments went to The Wall Street Journal, amounting to nearly US$ 6 million. Other media outlets that received payments via China Daily, on the pretext of advertisements and printing, were Foreign Policy ($240,000), The Des Moines Register ($34,600) and CQ-Roll Call ($76,000). The China Daily is reported to have spent a total of $11,002,628 on advertising in US newspapers, besides spending $265,822 on advertising with Twitter. Justice Department documents also reveal that China Daily expended close to $7.6 million on newspapers and printing companies to cater to US readers. While China Daily made extravagant payments to their counterparts in the US, the newspapers in the states were required to publish paid supplements called “China Watch“, which China Daily produces. These ‘inserts’ were designed to look like real news articles, while they often contained a pro-Beijing spin on contemporary news events.
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