Rubio calls on US media outlets to cut ties with CCP propaganda outlet China Daily

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is calling on nine U.S. mainstream media CEOs to sever their ties with China Daily, an English-language newspaper owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Propaganda Department that often gives flattering coverage of the regime.

“The CCP’s efforts to infiltrate American institutions are extensive, and news outlets are not immune to these ventures. China Daily is one of the CCP’s leading organs to subvert U.S. news media by amplifying the goals and ambitions of the party,” Rubio wrote Monday to The Seattle Times, the Houston Chronicle, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Time, USA Today, the Financial Times, the Sun Sentinel, and the Chicago Tribune.

Rubio said China Daily’s goal is to “subvert U.S. news media by amplifying the goals and ambitions of the party.” The outlet has published several articles claiming the U.S.’s “anti-China” reporting on the persecution of Xinjiang Uyghurs is an “outright lie.”

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Sen. Marco Rubio said China Daily’s goal is to “subvert U.S. news media by amplifying the goals and ambitions of the party.” (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, co-signed the letter. 

In 2021, Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings showed that multiple American outlets received hundreds of thousands of dollars from China Daily. China Daily registered with FARA in 1983 and was among a dozen Chinese media outlets that the U.S. State Department labeled a foreign mission of the People’s Republic of China.

“China Daily is an arm of the CCP. This is a well-known fact, and there are no shortage of examples showing the outlet’s fealty to the party. From whitewashing the genocide of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, to excusing the CCP’s continued bankrolling of Russia’s war against Ukraine, China Daily’s mission is to propagate the goals of the party,” Rubio wrote. 

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In 2021, Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filings showed that multiple American outlets received hundreds of thousands of dollars from China Daily. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato)

“No company based in the United States, including news outlets, should be complicit in legitimizing the CCP’s heinous acts or promoting the regime’s outright lies,” the letter continued.

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According to the most recent FARA disclosure, the nine outlets received more than half a million dollars in both ad revenue and printing collectively in 2023. 

Fox News Digital reached out to The Seattle Times, the Houston Chronicle, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Time, USA Today, the Financial Times, the Sun Sentinel, and the Chicago Tribune for comment.