Facebook Wants You to Know if You’re Getting Your News From the Wrong Government

Naureckas, Jim
http://fair.org/home/facebook-wants-you-to-know-if-youre-getting-your-news-from-the-wrong-government
Date Written:  2019-03-01
Publisher:  FAIR
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23507

Media outlets owned by a company with ties to the Russian government are forced to disclose their affiliation on Facebook. Media outlets owned or funded by the US government are not held to the same standard.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Facebook suspended the page of In the Now, along with three other pages run by Maffick - the current affairs channel Soapbox, the environment-oriented Waste-Ed and the history-focused BackThen - after the social media giant was asked about the RT-connected pages by CNN. CNN in turn, reported it was tipped off to the In the Now/RT connection by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group based at US government–funded German Marshall Fund....

Disclosure is good, right? For the goose but not the gander, apparently: Among the US-funded institutions with Facebook pages are, well, the German Marshall Fund. Its description just reads, "Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation." Will that page be taken down until the Fund acknowledges where its money comes from?

How about the PBS NewsHour, also funded by the US government? No mention of that on Facebook: Just, "On air and online, the PBS NewsHour provides in-depth analysis of the issues that matter to you."

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