Facebook hires journalist Campbell Brown to lead news partnership team

by Ali Breland - 01/06/17 1:47 PM ET

Facebook is adding a prominent TV journalist to its News Partnerships team to strengthen the company’s journalism ties.

Campbell Brown, formerly of CNN and NBC, will lead up Facebook’s News Partnerships team effective immediately, she announced in a Facebook post Friday morning.

“This is a different role for me, but one where I will be tapping my newsroom experience to help news organizations and journalists work more closely and more effectively with Facebook,” Brown wrote.

“I will be working directly with our partners to help them understand how Facebook can expand the reach of their journalism, and contribute value to their businesses.”

{mosads}Facebook stressed to The New York Times that Brown would not be operating as an editor-in-chief. Instead, her job will be to function as a bridge between news outlets and Facebook.

Brown’s hiring comes after a tough year for Facebook’s relationship with the media. The social media platform endured significant scrutiny and criticism after the rise of fake news on its site, which in some cases was more widely disseminated that factual stories.

The company also took criticism from the media abroad for its unclear policies, which led to the platform censoring the iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning image of a crying girl running from napalm blasts during the Vietnam War.

Also in 2016, human editors were laid off from overseeing the trending news portion of the website after accusations of bias. Some media analysts blamed the lack of human oversight for the rise of fake news.

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