Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared that Facebook News will cover Facebook itself after joking that he wasn’t aware Bloomberg got away with neglecting coverage of its namesake.
Zuckerberg spoke with News Corp CEO Robert Thomson on Friday during a lengthy conversation at The Paley Center for Media in New York to promote Facebook News, which began testing on Friday. Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook News curators would censor users from coverage about Facebook itself.
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“I ask, because there is some outlets like Bloomberg, that doesn’t like Bloomberg to cover [Mike] Bloomberg,” Axios media reporter Sara Fischer asked.
Zuckerberg laughed, saying he wasn’t familiar with Bloomberg’s policy not to cover former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who founded the media company.
“Bloomberg doesn’t cover Bloomberg,” Thomson chimed in.
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“Ah, interesting, I didn’t know that was a thing a person could do,” Zuckerberg responded as the crowd responded with laughter. “That won’t be our policy.”
Zuckerberg then joked, “Unfortunately our policies were set before this moment.”
The Facebook founder then said he doesn’t feel it would be the right approach to skip news about his own company.
“The team is going to be independent, for better or worse, we’re a prominent part of a lot of the news cycles. I don’t think that it would be reasonable to try to have a news tab that didn’t cover the stuff that Facebook is doing,” Zuckerberg said. “In order to make this a trusted source over time, they have to cover it objectively.”
Zuckerberg then reiterated that Facebook staffers wouldn’t be “writing the piece," but instead simply would be helping to curate content that journalists from other outlets create.
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“Whatever the big story of the day is, a lot the job of the journalism curation team will be figuring out which journalist wrote the definitive piece,” he said. “We’re quite aware that, in order for this product to have credibility and be trusted, this needs to be very independent.”
The tech giant bills Facebook News will allow users to have more control of the stories they see as well as the ability to discover a broader array of content.
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Facebook News, which will be first tested to a group of users in the United States, will also highlight relevant national stories on a daily basis. Facebook said it will now “reward” original reporting by enlisting a newly formed curation team of independent journalists who will manage the Today’s Stories section of Facebook News.
Facebook said that several “key features” were identified after speaking with both users and publishers, such as stories being selected by a team of journalists, personalized content “based on the news you read, share and follow,” and controls that allow users to hide unwanted content. Facebook News will also allow users to link subscriptions to news sites directly to Facebook.
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