Facebook Is Ignoring Its Fake News Issue, Journalists Claim

After letting misinformation and fake news spread across its platform, Facebook has suffered from global criticism. Worse, journalists appointed to help Facebook tackle the problem, according to a new report, have lost their faith in the company. Particularly, the journalists worked with Facebook as fact checkers, and later ended the controversial partnership with the social network.

As stated in the report, the company ignored the journalists’ concerns and did not use their expertise to tackle the misinformation spreading issue. Not only current but also former fact checkers for Facebook reported minimal outcomes from their collaboration with the social platform. They said they no longer trust the company as it declined to public meaningful documents about their work.

Brooke Binkowski, Snopes former managing editor, the fact checker partnering with Facebook for a couple years said that the social network actually took advantage of them to market the crisis. She stressed that the tech giant did not take the issues seriously, what they did care about is protecting their public image and making money. “They clearly don’t care”, Binkowski said.

Some fact checker journalists said the company hired a PR company using antisemitic narrative to fight critics, which they should have considered before deciding to work with it. It was obvious that the PR company’s job was to spread the propaganda which these fact checkers had to debunk.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO

After the presidential election in 2016 ended, the social network unveiled how Russian Internet Research Agency exploited its platform for spreading misinformation and dividing the community. It was also confirmed by the tech giant that millions of users were affected by the misinformation while the election was taking place. But the company then said it had worked with news outlets and made a war room including journalists to highlight and end misinformation.

Now, Facebook has over 40 partners in the media field around the world working with it as fact checkers, including PolitiFact, the Weekly Standard, and the Associated Press. The social platform declares a decrease in fake news thanks to partnerships with journalists.

Nevertheless, not all newsroom leaders buy this claim from Facebook. A fact checker currently working with Facebook said there’s no point in trusting Facebook if it is promoting the exact same news that journalists consider fake.

It is likely that people are having negative reactions because Facebook reportedly hired a consultancy to help with fighting its opponents, such as philanthropist and billionaire George Soros. The fact checker for the company stated that we should raise questions about how it is handling stories about this opponent on its network, regarding the fact that it pays people to specifically link political enemies to Soros.

Brooke Binkowski

About working with the social network, Binkowski emphasized that Facebook is a terrible firm and she personally does not want to relate to them. Fact checkers said their partnership with this company has demoralized them. The partnerships have, in fact, proved adverse effects. Binkowski added that she brought up the Myanmar issue over and over again, but Facebook totally ignored her.

Additionally, the giant tech firm has also been facing the accusation of blaming journalists and causing collateral damages to them.

The report was published on the Guardian, to which Facebook responded by posting on its blog. Accordingly, the social giant said it does not make its partners prioritize checking facts related to advertisers.