News Organizations Flag Concerns on Facebook's Political-Ad Rules -- Update
May 18 2018 - 5:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Benjamin Mullin
A trade group representing news organizations raised concerns in
a letter to Facebook Inc. that the company's rules on political ads
are overly broad and could affect their ability to promote stories
on the social network.
The News Media Alliance, whose nearly 2,000 members include Wall
Street Journal-parent Dow Jones & Co., the New York Times, the
Washington Post and many small papers, say Facebook's rules would
cause advertisements that promote news stories to be lumped in with
political messaging.
Facebook's new guidelines, which will go into effect later this
month, will categorize ad spending on topics such as U.S. poverty,
immigration and terrorism as political advertisements.
Publishers fear those guidelines would cover ads news
organizations purchase to promote articles that touch on those
topics, according to the letter. Political ads will be listed in a
Facebook archive that will disclose the amount of money spent on
ads and the demographics of the audience reached by each ad.
In its letter, the group said Facebook's approach, "dangerously
blurs the lines between real reporting and propaganda. It is a
fundamental mischaracterization of journalism that threatens to
undermine its ability to play its critical role in society as the
fourth estate."
The letter said forcing publishers to label their promotion of
stories as political ads "will have the effect of elevating less
credible news sources on Facebook, the exact opposite of your
stated intent."
Facebook's head of news partnerships, Campbell Brown, said in a
statement, "Preventing misinformation and interference in elections
is one of our top priorities. In response, we're making changes
that impact political and issue ads, and that will include news
stories covering politics and issues."
Facebook's new guidelines for political advertising come as the
social-media giant is reeling from successive revelations related
to alleged Russian election interference and the improper accessing
of data on its users.
This month, the House Intelligence Committee released a cache of
more than 3,000 ads purchased by the Internet Research Agency, a
pro-Kremlin group that purchased political advertising on Facebook
in an attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The letter concludes by calling upon Facebook to "reconsider its
treatment of news in its plan" and exempt advertisements promoting
news stories from its ad-archiving and labeling process.
--Deepa Seetharaman contributed to this article.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2018 17:15 ET (21:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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