News Organizations Flag Concerns on Facebook's Political-Ad Rules

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 will 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 had no immediate comment.

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 16:25 ET (20:25 GMT)

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