Murdoch To Zuckerberg: Want Real News? Pay For It.

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That’s Rupert Murdoch’s proposal — as outlined in a Monday statement — following Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement on January 19 that the social network will favor news stories published by “trusted” sources, as determined in user surveys.

Murdoch’s unexpected Monday statement said, “Facebook and Google have popularized scurrilous news sources through algorithms that are profitable for these platforms but inherently unreliable.”

Alluding to the importance of financially supporting traditional journalism, a notoriously financially unstable field, Murdoch said Facebook should pay “trusted” publishers a “carriage fee similar to the model adopted by cable companies.”

“The publishers are obviously enhancing the value and integrity of Facebook through their news and content but are not being adequately rewarded for those services,” Murdoch wrote. – READ MORE

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Facebook will reportedly begin to rank news outlets based on the level of trust users have in them as determined by surveys conducted by the social media platform.

The Washington Post reports that shortly after Facebook announced major changes to their newsfeed, which would prioritize posts from users’ friends and family above publications and advertisers, the social media service will now allow users to rank news outlets by level of trust. This seems to be a reaction by Facebook to criticism over the alleged spread of “fake news” across their platform. Facebook previously appointed ABC News and Snopes, among others, as arbiters of fake news, but it seems that the company will now use a survey of users to determine which news sources are trusted the most.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed the new timeline change in a post on Facebook’s blog. Zuckerberg stated, “Today I’m sharing our second major update this year: to make sure the news you see, while less overall, is high quality. I’ve asked our product teams to make sure we prioritize news that is trustworthy, informative, and local. And we’re starting next week with trusted sources.” – READ MORE

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Facebook has rolled out yet another change to its newsfeed, which they say will give greater visibility to posts from “friends and family.” The subtext is that it will decrease visibility to pages run by publishers and news sites, escalating the social media giant’s running battle with the publishing industry.

The influence of Facebook over the success or failure of publishers and news sites has expanded astronomically over the past few years. Consider this: at the inauguration of President Trump, Fox News’ coverage attracted the most viewers on cable news – an average of 8.8 million. But their Facebook video of the same event attracted almost twice that number: 16 million. In 2017, the most-shared news video on the platform was viewed no fewer than 67 million times. Facebook now has the power to make or break publishers.

If the latest newsfeed change is anything to go by, they’re now keen on breaking them. The change is going to slow the spread of content from all media outlets across Facebook, in a move that The Hill has speculated may be due to the pressure the platform is under to stop the flow of “fake news.” Given that attempts to target individual publishers can lead to charges of political bias, something which in the past almost led to a Senate-led investigation of Facebook, the platform might be trying to get around the problem by diminishing the reach of all publishers equally.

With Facebook’s change threatening to rob news sites and publishers of potentially millions of views, the change only further underscores Facebook’s extraordinary influence over the media landscape. No other organization in history, save perhaps the politburo of the Soviet Union during the era of the Warsaw Pact, has had this much influence over so many news outlets at the same time. – READ MORE

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