BILL HEMMER (CO-HOST): Facebook bringing in outside fact-checkers in an effort to keep fake news from popping up on your news feed. William La Jeunesse has been tracking the story from L.A. Intriguing at a minimum. How will it work, William?
WILLIAM LA JEUNESSE: Well Bill, Facebook says it doesn't want to be the gatekeeper or censor, but with 50 percent of Americans getting their news from that news feed, the company says this is the responsible thing to do. It's going to work in three ways. One, users can flag a story they think is fake, and as more complain, the story is flagged and sent to third party fact-checkers, like PolitiFact, FactCheck[.org], Snopes, to investigate, and if doubtful, that story is labeled “disputed.” Finally, Facebook itself is changing the way it works to marginalize click bait, those sensational headlines that grab readers, and stop the automated ads that rewarded fake news. Will it work? Well time will tell. Right now, Bill, this is in the experimental phase.
HEMMER: Some consider it logical. Is there a danger here and is it necessary?
LA JEUNESSE: Well, you could argue that fake news is a fake story. 84 percent of Americans say they know fake news when they see it. It's their responsibility. Even Facebook admits it is a fraction of 1 percent of all news. Others argue with so much news, reader-generated, there's no filter. Second, there's that whole network of companies that profit by posting false stories like, “Pope Francis endorsed Donald Trump,” or, “Hillary Clinton used a pizza parlor for a sex ring.” BuzzFeed found that that news got more shares and comments than real stories in The New York Times. The second concern is the politics of the fact-checkers, who in the past have demonstrated, Bill, a liberal bias on certain stories that were labeled false that were not. We will see.
