In the months following July 1999, David Ownby writes that the country's media apparatus "was churning out hundreds of articles, books, and television reports against Falun Gong. The Chinese public had not witnessed such overkill since the heyday of the Cultural Revolution."[16] State propaganda initially used the appeal of scientific rationalism to argue that Falun Gong's worldview was in "complete opposition to science" and communism;[17] the People's Daily asserted on 27 July 1999, that it "was a struggle between theism and atheism, superstition and science, idealism and materialism." Other rhetoric appearing in the state-run press centered on charges that Falun Gong had misled followers and was dangerous to health.