A note from our publisher; Reaction to our national news pages

While I had just about the same number of people excited about our new national news, I appreciated the three people who actually took the time to call me or email me and let me know they were not happy that we published a couple stories from the Epoch Times as part of our rollout of state and national news. I believe they were ok with the Associated Press pieces.

One woman was very angry and “disappointed” in us. As I tried to explain that I believe it’s important to hear from different points of view in a pluralistic society, she said she was well read but couldn’t participate with an organization (Epoch Times) that prints “conspiracy theories.” I tried to explain to her that it simply wasn’t true and as the fastest growing paper in the nation, they had been on the forefront of many investigative pieces that had contributed greatly to Congressional hearings highlighting gruesome human rights violations and justice department investigations which have proven them accurate. Her response was that it was propaganda and conspiracy theories. Really? A whistleblower from Google who turned over 1000 documents alleging bias? That really happened and today we find that 50 states have joined in an antitrust lawsuit. Just because someone is reporting on something that you don’t like or believe in shouldn’t be cause to shut them down. That’s not healthy and one of my concerns is that we’ve become so polarized that we can’t even have the conversation. We need to listen to each other and it would be nice to be gracious as well. It doesn’t hurt to be a little open minded, especially when we are talking about important issues like free speech and election tampering.

I am very proud, as a news organization. that they are doing the hard work that many newsrooms refuse to do or simply don’t have the manpower.

Also, I am a former LA Times employee, have read the LA Times daily for 20 years, as well as provide it at no cost for our Village News subscribers. We watch NPR in our home, actually pay for the Associated Press for our news, and really enjoy pulling news from a great variety of sources. One of those is the Epoch Times.

A little background which we go over in a podcast to be released in the next week. The Epoch Times was started 20 years ago by Georgia Tech Phd students who were also Chinese Americans. They truly loved and appreciated America and understood first hand after living under communist rule how destructive it is. Being part of the university culture, they became concerned that Americans were not getting the full picture on communism, socialism and what life is really like under totalitarianism and authoritarianism, which of course doesn’t allow many of the human rights we take for granted. They knew the news was well filtered by news organizations that didn’t want to lose their privilege of doing business in China or lose advertising supplied by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party).

The Epoch Times is in 37 countries and translated into 21 languages. Their staff has been beaten, shot, and imprisoned. They truly understand what it takes to stand, as they say, for “Truth and Tradition.”

My concern is that the entertainment we call cable news feeds on creating a culture of growing anger and causes us to disregard and even look down on people who don't think like we do and we are disintegrating our culture and destroying our country..

So, we encourage those of you who are skeptical to just give us a chance and maybe even subscribe to the Epoch Times, as well as the Valley News and we will continue to use them as one of many sources for our news from around the globe.