Facebook hired Campbell Brown–notorious for her hatred of unions and public schools and for her close friendship with Betsy DeVos–to represent the tech giant with news organization.
Recently, she convened a behind-closed-doors meeting with news executives and warned them that if they didn’t cooperate with Facebook, they would be dying “like in a hospice.”
During a closed-door and off-the-record meeting last week, top Facebook executive Campbell Brown reportedly warned news publishers that refusal to cooperate with the tech behemoth’s efforts to “revitalize journalism” will leave media outlets dying “like in a hospice.”
Reported first by The Australian under a headline which read “Work With Facebook or Die: Zuckerberg,” the social media giant has insisted the comments were taken out of context, even as five individuals who attended the four-hour meeting corroborated what Brown had stated.
“Mark doesn’t care about publishers but is giving me a lot of leeway and concessions to make these changes,” Brown reportedly said, referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “We will help you revitalize journalism… in a few years the reverse looks like I’ll be holding hands with your dying business like in a hospice….”
Brown’s warning about the dire prospects for news outlets that don’t get on board with a future in which corporate giants like Facebook are the arbiters of what is and isn’t trustworthy news comes as progressives are raising alarm that Facebook’s entrance into the world of journalism poses a major threat to non-corporate and left-wing news outlets.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Time to leave Facebook behind with the Trumpism and those that hate democracy and the US Constitution. If Brown said this and it was approved Facebook and/or Zuckerberg, anyone that continues to support Facebook and Zuckerberg is someone that wants to live in 1984’s Big Brother world with an environment like Animal Farm.
AGREE, Lloyd. Thank you.
Lloyd, you are smart and brave. Thank you.
Agreed.
Fakebook IS animal farm, with Campbell Brown Mollie the horse and Zuckerberg Napolean the pig.
I was going to write that Facebook is fascistic, but Stalinist with Big Brother surveillance capability is a more apropos comparison. Facebook is definitely totalitarian. History repeats itself, especially when no one studies history or literature. George Orwell predicted Facebook in great detail. That monopoly needs to be broken up and/or regulated as a public utility.
Yet the fascist, autocratic kleptocrats are doing everything they can to destroy the public sector.
…to destroy democracy.
Maybe it’s time to STAY on FB and share every single post from Diane that debunks the “reform” movement… and while that might be a daunting task, if every reader of this blog does so it MIGHT offset the “news” that Ms. Brown and Mr. Zuckerberg feed the platform.
Better to find an alternative to Fakebook.
They do exist.
The fake news and censorship are not the worst aspects of Fakebook.
One can ignore those , though I realize that a lot of people who use Fakebook believe everything they read there.
The most insidious aspect of Fakebook by far is the data collection and sharing with whomever Zuckerberg chooses.
Incidentally, I happen to believe that creduloussness on the part of people using Fakebook is a much bigger problem than fake news.
That would be great if everyone would do that.
Thank you for this information, Diane.
Reinforces what I think about Zuckerberg.
Which is exactly why, no matter how odious Alex Jones is, I’m not comfortable with Fakebook having the power to determine whether he is or isn’t legitimate.
There is something very funny about the idea of Alex Zuckerberg judging Mark Jones.
“Funny” as in I ate something funny last week that kept me in the bathroom for the better part of the next 24 hours.
“Infowar and Infowhore”
When Mark looks in the mirror
He sees an Info whore
He thinks “this is an error”
But no, it’s Infowar
Infowar or Infowhore?
12 of one, a dozen more
Alex Jones or Zuckerberg
Either one is quite absurd
Twitter first suspended Jones’s personal account after he tweeted a video on Tuesday, August 14 in which he called for his followers to ready their “battle rifles” to act against a wide array of opponents, including the mainstream media — a clear violation of Twitter’s content policy against speech or groups that “use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.”
Jones stirs up his crazy followers to commit acts of violence.
Many newspapers are participating in a national campaign tomorrow with editorials condemning Trumps efforts to demean and delegitimize the press.
That does not address the arrogance of Brown and Facebook. Brown seems to be saying that Facebook is a publisher, in the journalism business, and in competition with publishers of news, especially credible news.
BUT, Facebook has consistently claimed it is only a “platform,” not really a provider of content. Maybe Brown will be on the ropes for comments that make Facebook appear to be in the publishing business where editorial judgment is required. For more on the consequences of these differences see https://earlyamericanists.com/2018/08/07/from-platform-to-publisher/
More about the pushback on Trump—https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/13/more-than-100-us-newspapers-plan-editorials-decrying-trump-media-attacks
It’s just amazing how these people get hired and re-hired and recycled over and over again.
How many times does Campbell Brown have to fail before she stops getting these lucrative, prestigious jobs?
Is there a list of 150 people they circulate for decades, with hiring limited to that list?
Chiara,
I was just thinking this as I was reading thru the comments! It really gives credence to “The Peter Principle”, doesn’t it? She was nothing but a pretty face on TV. Notice I used the word WAS.
Campbell Brown gets hired for one simple reason: because she is willing to say anything her employer tells her to say — for a price, of course.
Most people are not willing to do that.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to be in the pocket of the charter school industry. It will be interesting to see if NYSUT ultimately endorses him.
https://nypost.com/2018/08/14/cuomos-re-election-bid-gets-boost-from-charter-schools-big/
The funniest part to me about Facebook management is how rigidly CONVENTIONAL they are. They market themselves as these great innovative “disrupters” but there is NOTHING new about anything they do, including hiring the same old well-connected elites to high positions.
It’s the same with the ed “ideas”. It’s conventional. It’s a collection of business school slogans presented as something new.
Kids are MUCH savvier than adults about this. They don’t worship at the altar of tech giants like middle aged people do. They treat them like giant for-profit businesses, which is what they are.
This is one area where the adults are much more naive than the children.
Diane – I passed this on to my husband Paul who still writes op eds that appear in CT,’s Hearst papers and Gannett Papers in FL and often are picked up beyond. We are old now, but once knew all the top editors and publishers. Those still living all know Paul. Too bad we have gotten older. This is a bizarre tactic by Brown. But it is true that many of my husband’s age missed the boat a decade ago about how digital would impact print.
“ALEC sets the table for gerrymandering, union busting, protecting fossil fuels and privatizing schools”, posted at Exposed by CMD
Campbell Brown is the best thing that ever happened to Facebook.
Every time she opens her mouth, Zuckerberg looks more dishonest.
Good one.
Campbell Brown and Mark Zuckerberg walk into a bar. The bartender says, “What’ll ya have?” Brown and Zuck say in unison, “Everything.”
LCT: Good one!!!
And the bartender asks “Would you like that on the rocks?”
Who is Campbell Brown and was she ever a teacher?
This might help for context
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bud0ABVCQAEUEMc?format=jpg
In addition to unbridled wealth which enlists the tech tyrants to steal democracy, there are the academics used by the wealthy to create false results and to drive a narrative. When and where will the payback be?
Princeton’s Dobbie (funded by Arnold), Harvard’s Fryer (funded by Gates/Broad), Notre Dames’ Berends (funded by Waltons) and, the Center for American Progress (Clinton Democrats) all focused on vouchers in a small window of time producing papers. Berends’ paper, which had a quasi-negative conclusion (initially, before a peer review/Journal was involved and it was found to be entirely negative) was presented
to pro charter school groups according to Chalkbeat, an organization which is funded by privatizers. Chalkbeat went to the usual step of formally asking the state for a copy of Berends’ paper.
Coincidence?
I’m happy to just learn that there are now 200 newspapers who are going to have opinion writers protest the devaluation of our free press.
………………………………………..
The New York Times
Top Stories
August 15, 2018
TOP STORIES
Why a free press matters: The Times editorial board and 200 other papers are raising their voices to affirm the value of independent journalism.
Wednesday, August 15, 2018 5:26 PM EST
Answering a call last week from The Boston Globe, The Times is joining more than 200 newspapers, from large metro-area dailies to small local weeklies, to remind readers of the value of America’s free press. These editorials, some of which we’ve excerpted, together affirm a fundamental American institution.
I’m glad he’s optimistic about Alex Jones’ behavior changing. I doubt that anything will make him any better. He is making to much money throwing out garbage.
When Is Twitter CSO Dorsey going to restrict the Orange IDIOT’s racial and ignorant comments?
……………..
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said his company’s decision to temporarily restrict the account of InfoWars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could change Jones’ behavior.
By STEVEN OVERLY 08/15/2018 02:19 PM EDT
“I feel, you know, any suspension, whether it be a permanent one or a temporary one, makes someone think about their actions and their behaviors,” Dorsey said in an excerpt of an NBC News interview set to air tonight.
“We have found that it does have the potential to change — impact and change behavior,” Dorsey continued when pressed on the matter. “So, whether it works within this case to change some of those behaviors and change some of those actions, I don’t know. But this is consistent with how we enforce.”…
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/15/twitter-alex-jones-infowars-jack-dorsey-778763
Fordham Ohio dumped a load of crap on Aug. 10. “We should remain agnostic about the ways schools organize themselves”. Is that what the richest 0.1% are doing when they flood the state capitols with big bucks to grease the rails for no accountability charter schools? The same crap-delivering guy who claimed that Figlio’s voucher paper had a finding that competition improved schools (it didn’t), wrapped up his mature pile with, “What matters most is that children receive a world class education.” Hey- Aaron, how similar is a bargain basement, 3rd world, school-in-a-box to Lakeside, where Gates’ kids went?
Surprise- The Laura and John Arnold Foundation listed a donation of $1,180,000 (2018-20) to the Third Way, a group of investment bankers and Clinton Democrats who met in Columbus, Ohio last month to plot ways to stop progressive candidates. (Tim Ryan and Matt Landrieu attended.)
The Laura and John Arnold Foundation posts their education grants on-line. It’s lengthy, including ed reform groups, Teacher Town USA Inc., New Teacher Project, Fordham Institute (2012-16). There was $381,000 to the University of Kentucky which employs Waddington, Berends co-author. Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania got $648. 065. I wonder if the Penn Wharton Budget Model is related (It’s funded by Arnold).
” a future in which corporate giants like Facebook are the arbiters of what is and isn’t trustworthy news
Yuh, in Zuckerberg’s/ Brown’s dreams. Who gets their news from Facebook? Many articles have repeated a misinterpreted Pew Research finding – “44%” – which turns out to mean people who occasionally get “information about events and issues that involve more than just your friends and family.” And only 18% get such info “often” from any social media site.
Another Pew report finds that nearly 60% get it from TV; ‘online’ is 2nd – but 3/4 of them get it from news sites/apps (not social media) – radio 3rd, print newspapers 4th.
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/12/how_many_people_really_get_their_news_from_facebook.html
Methinks Campbell Brown – as usual – has a big mouth & nothing to back it up with. This is the same gal who posed as an ed-reform agitator/ expert based on a 12-yr career in TV news reporting [NONE of it relating to education] – plus a few heart-felt Op-Eds from a mom’s POV. Now – as the head of global news for an outfit maybe 15% of the public relies on for global news – she thinks she’s got major news publishers by the short hairs.
P.S. The first line above is especially funny in light of the millions of FB users who were exposed to “news” [pretend news that were really phishing ads] & enticed by false-flag FB groups, all paid for by Russian disinformation jockeys into FB’s account.
somehow this entire false-news phishing enterprise and the name Campbell Brown fit together so well
😀
Support our media tomorrow!
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1L1088
Zuckerberg should never have hired Campbell Brown. Keeping her around isn’t going to help things.
Zuckerberg has been called a really “smart” guy. Maybe. But the Campbell Brown hire makes that dubious. The longer he keeps her, the more credibility he loses. Then again, he’s already lost lots of it.
She has a voice of reason.
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Commentary: My father, Ronald Reagan, would never have stood for this;
…President Donald Trump has quite successfully set today’s tone. He stirred up anger that was already simmering in the people who support him, and then he lit a match.
He gave them an enemy — always a useful tactic. Naming the press as the enemy has precedents: Many tyrants have employed it to their advantage. Trump may not read much, but I’ll bet he knows that.
Those of us who are horrified by the vilification of the news media, those of us who cringe at the sight of angry mobs jeering at the cordoned-off journalists at Trump rallies, far outnumber those who are swept up by this ugly passion. We are still in the majority. But if we are silent, if we don’t speak up, if we don’t raise our voices and say, “This is not America,” it won’t matter that we are in the majority…
https://www.bendbulletin.com/opinion/6451161-151/commentary-my-father-ronald-reagan-would-never-have
“No Rhyme or Reason”
Ronald Reagan
Voice of sense?
Times are changin’
Presidents
SDP: On most issues Raygun was a disaster. However, on this putdown of the press I’m glad to read that he wouldn’t have been so willing.
I have a friend who thinks Raygun was one of our best presidents. She seemed a little shocked when I said FDR was one of the best. There is no accounting for taste.
After calling Ollie North a hero and saying that North and others who had been indicted were not guilty of any crime, Ronald Reagan said this
“I’ve got to take a second to tell you. The whole so called Iran scandal…I find it hard to think of as a scandal.”
One can only guess at what Reagan said in private about the news media who called it just that, a scandal.
The funniest way that times are changin’ Presidents is that George W. Bush is now being quoted as some sort of “voice of reason” even by supposed liberal news media like NPR.
It’s just bizarre.
Compared to Trump, any prior president looks like a reasonable, intelligent person who made mistakes.
Trump is a monumental disaster, unequaled in our history.
Unlike Nixon or Harding or anyone else, he actually wants to destroy the nation and all our alliances.
SDP: You win. I’m just glad that Raygun’s daughter is putting down the Orange IDIOT.
Naming the press as the enemy has precedents:
Owner T. Jefferson:
—“The most effectual engines for pacifying a nation are the public papers… A despotic government always keeps a kind of standing army of news-writers who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invent and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”
Now, the breaking news crowd will teach us a thing or two about election swaying.
Never mind they gave over 2 BILLION$ worth of free coverage to what’s-his-name,
before the selectoral process…
Jefferson clearly had people like former NY Times writer Judith Miller in mind.
Ironies abound in the current judgements of mainstream media outlets about what and who is and is not fake news.
SDP: How about this totally wacky ‘news’ from our favorite Fox? Communist Japan? Ouch.
I also question the ‘we are the most generous country in the world”. We could be if we weren’t so busy building up our military and NSA. We certainly aren’t generous to immigrants.
I read yesterday about a couple who adopted a baby from Peru. The kid got a visa that is close to expiring. The child, who is now ready for pre-school, is in danger of being deported. Guess she spent too much time raping our citizens.
……..
Fox News: Defeat of ‘Communist Japan’ Proves U.S. Is Great
On Fox & Friends on Thursday morning, Ainsley Earhardt proudly recalled the United States defeating “communist Japan.” She was responding to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo who said Wednesday that America “was never that great.” In her patriotic fervor, she fudged some of the details in a passionate defense of the nation: “We defeated communist Japan, radical Islamists… We’re the most generous country in all of the world. Yes, we have our faults, but because of this country our world is definitely a better place. We are great.” One of those faults might be knowledge of history: Japan has never been a communist country.
It goes without saying that Jefferson would also have had Fox in mind.
But some think NY Times is above such behavior.