Facebook won’t call itself a media company. Is it time to reimagine journalism for the digital age?
Web Publication: The Verge, by Catherine Buni
Call it what it is
A week ago, when the nation was still slapping themselves over the reality that Trump had been elected, a hand full of articles came out questioning the role of social media and Facebook in allowing fake news to be posted. What started as a footnote is now virtually front-page news. In the span of one week, people that blithely pasted questionable content to their Facebook wall suddenly found religion and become overnight experts on credible news!
Perhaps average consumers of news can be excused for their reactionary transformation but what are we going to say about Zuckerberg’s Facebook? As the featured article, Facebook won’t call itself a media company. Is it time to reimagine journalism for the digital age? points out, Facebook is not ready to admit that they’re a media company. On the one hand, it’s just matter-of-fact for social media to be a conduit for the news business; its happening and it’s rather effective, is it not? Facebook does understanding that they facilitate media. That is not the issue. Accepting the responsibilities and risks associated with that position are in question. It’s a schizophrenic dilemma. Social media in general has a lot of conceptual reasons why they don’t want to declare themselves as media providers – some quite valid – but they can’t quite reconcile themselves with what really transpires outside and away from the mother ship.
The Pew Research Center’s article News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016 shows that 6 in 10 Americans get news from social media. In comparison, cable, network nightly TV, radio, and print newspapers influence less than half of that. Needless to say, Facebook leads all other categories, traditional and web based.
Forget about Zuck for a moment, the stakes in new media distribution are high. Nobody benefits from fake news and as I pointed out in the prior commentary, fake news affects both left and right. While the left prides themselves in being more educated, I watched some of these same people fall for the most ridiculous trash as they shared it on their FB feeds. Of course the same occurs on the right with equal frequency. So when Facebook initiates a crackdown on the media that they simultaneously disavow, and when that cuts into the expectations of 6 in 10 Americans that consume at least part of their news from Facebook, we have a problem Houston.
I’m glad the discussion is happening. I’m glad that at least some average FB Joes are thinking about it too because compared to what is coming down the pike, this issue has barely gotten started.
Postscript: This article, This Professor’s List of ‘Fake News’ Sites Goes Predictably Wrong highlights the minefield that awaits social media’s internal regulators. Early indications of course suggest that conservatives will be disproportionally trampled.
Postscript II: And then there is this: The Mainstream Media Has Only Itself to Blame for the “Fake News” Epidemic