Facebook’s take on online news: ‘We’re not going to uninvent the internet’

Will Facebook stop hosting news content from publishers, hoovering up their ad revenue and crippling journalism? | PODCAST

Campbell Brown, global head of news for Facebook. Picture: James Croucher

The central question is, will Facebook stop hosting news content from publishers, hoovering up their ad revenue and at the same time crippling journalism?

It is the only time during the interview for The Australian’s Behind The Media podcast that Campbell Brown, Facebook’s global head of news partnerships, looks slightly taken aback. “Well look, we’re not going to uninvent the internet,” says Ms Brown, a former NBC and CNN journalist. “You know, this is the world we live in. There is a massive transformation that’s taking place in media and at the end of the day publishers have to decide what’s best for them.”

Best might not involve Facebook. It’s a free world, after all.

“A publisher has to decide for themselves whether or not they want to put their content on Facebook. They certainly don’t have to.” Really? The success of the ­global social media network (it will make $US56 billion ($76bn) in ad revenues this year) means, despite Ms Brown’s protestations — there really is not much choice at all. You are on Facebook, with its 2.23 billion active users, or you are nowhere.

Despite a long day, Melbourne and back to meet with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s all-important inquiry into the tech giants and the news media, and despite a long week (India-Singapore-Australia), Ms Brown sits in Facebook’s Sydney HQ, chugs down an energy drink and is ready to go.

Publishers want subscription models and Facebook is keen to ­facilitate, says Ms Brown, the Emmy-winning former NBC and CNN anchor, who joined the digital giant last year.

The New York Times said some in the industry thought Ms Brown was an “ambassador from a ­dictatorship, willing to deliver bad news with a smile and some ­canapes”.

No canapes today, but plenty of smiles, and Ms Brown proves a charming and effective advocate for the digital giant, although you do wonder if her meetings with publishers prompt quite as many smiles. It leads this writer to ­ponder, am I being played, just as Facebook has played the news ­industry?

Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of News Corp, publisher of The Australian, advocates that Facebook should pay publishers for their content, like a TV network pays for programs.

Ms Brown rejects this. “I think there are business models that are going to sustain journalism much longer than Facebook paying publishers,” she says crisply.

On a brighter note, paying for newspaper subscriptions via Facebook is on its way. “Absolutely, except that you will own the relationship. The transaction will take place with you, not with Facebook.” Trial alpha testing with a small number of publishers was cautiously encouraging. “Prior to this initial test we’ve done, there was no paywall at Facebook at all, and this was something that Mr Murdoch made very clear was very important to your properties, and many other publishers.”

Ms Brown says initial tests were good, “about a 17 per cent increase over what a publisher would do on mobile web. I’m not dancing on tables or anything yet.” So the Facebook effect is 17 per cent, I ask. “I think that’s fair.”

Earlier that day, Ms Brown met with the ACCC, which is examining the digital giants and their ­impact on the news media in a world-first inquiry.

“I thought it was a really interesting conversation and they’re very knowledgeable.”

Were they tough? “They were actually quite lovely and charming and it was a great conversation. I hope that I was able to bring a little perspective about how we’re approaching our work with publishers and the news ­industry.” But Ms Brown doesn’t fear the ACCC.

“I think what you are ­asking me, does Facebook fear regulation? I don’t think we are ­opposed to regulation per se. I think we want to get it right. And that means finding something that actually makes sense for the platforms and the publishers and for people.”

What’s it like for a proud, award-winning journalist mentored by the great NBC correspondent Tim Russert to join a company that has no attachment to journalism? “Oh I don’t think that’s true at all,” Ms Brown ­responds. But does Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s slightly remote founder, really care about journalism? “That’s why they hired me. I mean Mark himself is extremely curious and has learnt a ton about journalism and the news business.

“He is someone who has conversations with a huge variety of people on different subjects, so ­absolutely.” At the same time Ms Brown is on her global mission to exponentially expand the number of news executives among her Facebook friends. The Facebook newsfeed is ­devastating some publishers.

Connecting friends and family is the company mission, she says.

“Friends and family want to ­connect and share news stories.

“ It’s an additional part of our mission, to inform the ­community.”

Last month, after a series of scandals involving Cambridge Analytica mining the ­details of millions of users and the fake news scandal that benefited Don­ald Trump during the 2016 US presidential election campaign, Facebook suffered a multi-billion-dollar erasure of stockmarket value, although it has partially ­recovered.

Facebook has removed the ­financial incentives around “false news”, as she calls it. “It’s very similar to how we approach spammers. We’re shutting down their ability to monetise, which has helped a lot.”

The changes to the newsfeed downgraded a lot of clickbait headlines. “We also want to elevate the good. So not just down-ranking false news, but turning the dial down on clickbait and sensationalism, you know ‘a lady swallowed a frog and you’ll never believe what happened next!’ ”

For all this, Facebook is not a publisher, she firmly maintains. “Having worked for two gigantic media companies, I came to Facebook and went ‘Wow, this is a place full of engineers’. Journalists have a different language from engineers. We ­operate differently, we think differently, and the companies operate differently.”

Yet Facebook hosts so much news content. “It’s a platform for content. CNN or a Fox News know how to do news far better than Facebook. We’re not in the news business but we have a ­responsibility to the news eco­system and that’s different.”

Yet this week’s controversy, Facebook’s decision along with over digital companies, to ban controversial Alex Jones and his far-right conspiracy theorist media platform InfoWars, looks like an editorial decision. Community standards, Ms Brown counters. “I’m a pretty strong free speech advocate as a journalist. But there has to be a balance if you want to keep the community safe. He was removed because he had violated our community standards a certain number of times that made it allowable to take him off the platform.”

Mark Thompson, chief executive of the New York Times company, has criticised Facebook over recent policies, joining an industry campaign started by Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp. Mr Thomson said Facebook’s plan to let users rank the trustworthiness of news ­sources was a sinister attempt to set­ ­itself up as the internet’s ­“editor-in-chief”.

“I think he fundamentally misunderstands what we’re doing. That’s not how it works,” Ms Brown says. A trust score would be just one of many signals that would determine a news story ranking. “These are all different factors so to pull out one and say ‘this is Facebook being editor’ is absurd. It doesn’t make sense, it’s not how we work.”

Ms Brown won her Emmy for reporting on Hurricane Katrina, which devastated her home state of Louisiana in 2005. How would she feel if a website ripped off her reporting and Facebook’s algorithm ranked that above her own work? “We are trying to find ways to mark and identify original content. There’s a test we’re doing with some publishers here in Australia around breaking news, where they can put a tag on a story that says ‘this is breaking news’ to make it stand out.”

It feels like original reporting is increasingly becoming more and more rare. “Can we figure out a way to give that content more meaning? It requires building consensus among journalists, who, you know, like to argue.”