Highlights:
- Facebook developed a criterion to identify media houses and organisations under the government’s influence
- The tech giant consulted with more than 60 global experts for the same.
The US based tech giant, Facebook has delivered its promised and has started labelling the media outlets and publishers which are either partially or wholly under the editorial control of the governments of a country to which they belong to.
The news was announced by the social media giant in a blog post.
Facebook says that it believes that this step holds paramount importance and will also give a boost to transparency as several media firms from around the globe do have heavy government influence.
From today, the labelling of free content will go live, while the labels for paid content from the state-controlled media will begin showing from later in 2020.
These labels will be visible to people from all countries in Facebook’s Ad Library page view, on Page, and also in the Page Transparency section. In the US, the labels will be visible on the posts in News Feed which the company believe should start from the week coming up.
To develop the criteria for the identification of the said media organisations which are under the influence or control of the government, Facebook consulted with more than 65 experts from around the globe in the domains of Human Rights, Media, and Governance.
Facebook’s Head of Cybersecurity, Nathaniel Gleicher said, “We know that governments continue to use funding mechanisms to control media, but this alone doesn’t tell the full story. That’s why our definition of state-controlled media extends beyond just assessing financial control or ownership and includes an assessment of editorial control exerted by a government,” in the blog post.
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In order to assess the level of influence of the state, Facebook will look into several information of the company including, mission statement, information on owners, stakeholders, board members, management, government appointees in leadership positions, and disclosure of direct or indirect ownership by entities or individuals holding elected office.
Even the editorial guidelines including transparency around the sources of the content and independence and diversity of sources will also be factored in during the assessment.
“Facebook will also look into their sources of funding and the correctional policies or procedure followed by them for complaints.”
Media organisation which have a statute in the host country that clearly protects the editorial independence of the organization or have been assessed by an independent, credible, external organization finding that the statute has in fact been complied with and established procedures have been followed will be excluded from labelling.
The report suggests that among all the media outlets, the ones which are most likely to be labelled will be from China and Russia as they are most likely to have influence from their governments.
Organisations such as the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), which, however, does fall under its government’s purview enjoys editorial independence, are less likely to be labelled.
In the recent times, Facebook has seen itself at the receiving end of a major backlash from both within and outside the company ever since they refused to take any action on some controversial comments which were made by the US President Donal Trump following the growing violence and protests in the country against the brutality of the police force.
The tech giant has also announced that it will soon start blocking the ads from such media companies in the US in order to minimise the foreign influence in public debates before the 2020 US elections which are scheduled to be held in November.
You can read the blog here: https://about.fb.com/news/2020/06/labeling-state-controlled-media/
