This is a stunner. Facebook has hired Campbell Brown to smooth over bad feelings with the mainstream media.
To friends of public education, Brown is known as a propagandist for privatization.
Will she give up her billionaire-funded role at The 74?
In recent years, Ms. Brown has emerged as a major player in the pitched political battles over charter schools, prominently clashing with teachers unions while advocating against teachers tenure. She is married to Dan Senor, a Republican foreign policy adviser and former White House adviser, who is making his own media foray with a bid to buy the Israeli financial newspaper Globes. And, during the campaign Ms. Brown was critical of Donald J. Trump.
But Facebook executives said they were hiring Ms. Brown for her understanding of the news industry as a one-time White House correspondent, co-anchor of “Weekend Today” and primary substitute anchor of “Nightly News” at NBC News, and prime-time anchor on CNN, which she left in 2010.
She served on Betsy DeVos’ board at the American Federation for Children (a pro-voucher organization of right-wingers) and DeVos held to fund Brown’s anti-union activities.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It gets MORE INSANE by the moment. This is a corporate TAKE OVER and more than gross.
Yes, Yvonne, it’s extremely insane.
But the corporate take over of a whole lot seems to be proceeding apace.
The schools, our private information, our health care, etc, are being increasingly corporatized. As long as the wealthy business people and companies make a lot of money, forget the best interests of the people. 😦
Another privatization fox guarding the public education hen house. The consolidation of power continues, putting us one step closer to separate and unequal schools than ever before. Our children deserve better.
What is the best way to reach Zuckerberg with a petition to reconsider this dis
aterous choice??
Start a petition on FB or Change.org or some other site.
Diane – Have passed this on to my husband who does media commentary op eds etc. He may not comment on this but it is indeed strange and he understands why.
Thanks, Gail. Clearly the New York Times knows that Campbell Brown is biased against public schools and teachers and their unions. Does Facebook know it as well?
Certainly, Zuckerberg and Brown travel the same circles; he helped orchestrate the charter nonsense in Newark, NJ. They are pals; they have the same ideals.
Why is everyone upset? I would like to thank Facebook for taking Campbell from her foray into edu-tourism back to the private sector. Just keep her talking about Facebook’s fake news in general, and not propagating Zuckerberg’s edu-corporatism fake news — oh.
why is this?
I have no idea why. Maybe she didn’t get funding from the billionaires to keep The 74 going. Maybe she was bored. Maybe she wanted a bigger perch from which to attack public schools, teachers, and unions. As to why FB hired her, who knows? They surely know she is biased and highly opinionated. The NY Times knows, so FB must know too.
While still in Harvard (boy, a lot of Bad Stuff comes out of that place!), Mark Zuckerberg referred to people who provided him with their personal information as “dumb f&#s.”
He later apologized for that, although Facebook’s practices ever since suggest he was lying, as does his hiring of someone like Campbell Brown.
Don’t be one of Mark Zuckerberg’s “dumb f*&#s:” delete your Facebook account.
From reading the article, it would appear that C. Brown will be a kind of Ombudswoman between Facebook and the news media. NYTimes article: Quote – Facebook executives said Ms. Brown would help find better accommodations between Facebook and its journalistic partners so that both find the partnerships equally worthwhile — whether through Facebook Live, its Instant Articles feature or its news feed.
The company does have some seasoned journalists in its ranks. But it does not have any in a senior position working on its newsroom partnerships, contributing to a disconnect between the company and news organizations when discussing how to collaborate on projects. End Quote
Zuckerberg dropped all that money on Newark which has been a “greeding” ground for charter schools and school privatization. Zuckerberg and Brown are certainly on the same page where it comes to education.
If you type enough bad or discouraging posts about this hire on facebook with links to this story, they will get the picture. They ARE READING EVERYTHING YOU POST, ALL THE TIME. You really don’t even need to start a group, just post and share and share and share again….
Why did Zuckerberg fire all 27 Facebook news editors in August?
He let fake news, most of which was detrimental to HRC, repeatedly trend like a tsunami. It can’t be just because the highly unreliable Breitbart news complained, can it?
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/08/27/entire-facebook-trending-news-team-fired-following-breitbart-coverage/
Zuckerberg’s employees were unable to get his support to address fake news before election day.
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/15/renegade-facebook-employees-form-task-force-to-battle-fake-news.html
Should the federal government also investigate Facebook’s handling of fake news during the election?
Makes one wonder if hiring Campbell is part of a scheme playing out slowly.
My thoughts exactly, Mary. Zuckerberg mishandled the fake news of Facebook although one does wonder why Brown could be seen as an improvement.
It’s an elite club and none of us are in it 🙂
Because of the fragmented nature of ed reform initiatives and the fact that most public school law is state law, we’re really better off with state-level reporting anyway. The national stuff is so generalized as to be almost useless, IMO.
If I didn’t read Ohio newspapers I would think charter schools were vastly superior to public schools and that just isn’t true in this state, or in many other states.
The same with vouchers- Ohio has had vouchers a very long time and I haven’t seen any miraculous magic bullet market effect.
Chiara, I think that we need to keep fighting at the national level, but I also think that it will be ultimately more important to work at the state level, to work for members of the Boards of Education, the local politicians, and our state representatives and governors who are on the same page as we are.
Yes, this may take awhile, but it needs to be done.
I don’t want to shut Facebook down or anything but they do contribute to a lot of conspiracy theory spreading.
I can’t tell you how many people told me Obama was “outlawing” the reading of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. I’m not on Facebook but they all read it on Facebook. I bet there are millions of people who believe he banned it. I heard it repeated at least 20 times from people here.
If a presidential candidate was not sold on charters as the way, and Wall Street wanted to curtail that candidate’s campaign, then unrestricted fake news on Facebook where 50% of Americans get their news would be helpful to the election results.
Just when y ou think it can’t possibly worse than this, then it does.
God help u s.
Can this be part of a larger strategy to maintain quality control of Russian- and Macedonian-based fake news for American audiences? Could this be why NBC is desperately recruiting Fox Spews personalities to get access and align with the Trump propaganda machine? Only Putin knows. (Apologies to The Shadow.)
[…] education advocates expressed dismay that Facebook selected Brown. Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch ― a longtime critic of Brown ― wrote on her blog that “to friends of public education, Brown […]
Wow. Sounds like a bad move, FB. I could be wrong– maybe Campbell Brown’s news-career resume works for this ombudsman position. But we’ve all seen from her 74 site that she’s prone to spreading ed-reformer memes which come pretty darn close to fake news. Why not pick someone from a neutral news background– CSPAN for example?
The perception that tech billionaires are left-leaning is false. They are neocons that saw the value in glomming onto Democratic social issues, to mask their exploitive plots.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are investors in the largest seller of for-profit schools-in-a-box. The World Bank promotes for-profit schools to the exclusion of schools for the common good-public schools.
Intermingling, among the staffs of the Walton’s, Gates, Zuckerberg, and the Koch’s, should surprise no one. Gates funds the education programs of the Aspen Institute. David Koch is on the Aspen Board.
[…] education advocates expressed dismay that Facebook selected Brown. Education historian and activist Diane Ravitch ― a longtime critic of Brown ― wrote on her blog that “to friends of public education, […]