Rosebud

Facebook better off liking title of top media firm

Facebook may want to update its status after being accused of suppressing conservative news. The $340-billion social network denies a lefty bias, saying algorithms and humans keep things neutral. Like all purveyors of journalism, though, the company is finding points of view can't be helped. It's time Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg embraced his role as a media boss.

The allegations in a report on Monday from technology blog Gizmodo ignited a firestorm of criticism. The US Senate even launched an investigation, prompting Zuckerberg to assure Facebook users that his staff had "found no evidence this report was true."

The company is, of course, free to select sources and pick the news it wants to run, practices typical in professional newsrooms. A manual it disclosed on Monday details how editors continuously check 10 media outlets - including USA Today, The Guardian, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal - to determine whether to mark a story as national news.

Facebook is surprisingly influential. More than 60 per cent of its US users get their news from the site, according to a recent Pew Research survey. The company has been inviting the likes of The New York Times and CNN to publish video and articles directly to its news feed.

The social network downplays its clout, however, arguing that the algorithms behind what's displayed on its site are inherently neutral and, in any case, hundreds of other news sources are just a click away. But Facebook has more than one billion accounts, offering an audience and information source of unrivalled size. What's more, algorithms can be deceptively biased, reflecting programmers' choices.

Like all dominant players in an industry, though, Facebook is vulnerable. Coming generations will find new technologies for communicating, and there's no assurance that the multibillion-dollar company can control most - or even any - of them. To keep users coming, Facebook may need to build credibility by disclosing more about how it chooses and displays the news and other information.

Consumer preferences don't change overnight, of course, and Facebook is nothing if not savvy about developing new media and drawing visitors. Whether they continue to flock to the site, however, may quickly become a matter of trust.