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Report: BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith trashes conservatives, anoints himself Supreme Arbiter of Bias at Facebook meeting

Report: BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith trashes conservatives, anoints himself Supreme Arbiter of Bias at Facebook meeting

BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith reportedly has a problem with conservative publications being represented in meetings with Facebook.

At a meeting that took place last week before Facebook testified before Congress Tuesday, Smith objected to the fact that roughly half of the attending executives were from conservative outlets, The Wall Street Journal reported. He reportedly said that Facebook had a "fundamental misconception" about how the news industry works, and other executives from left-leaning publications agreed with him.

Smith singled out The Daily Caller, calling into question the publication's journalistic standards. From The Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Smith said that the number of conservative publications in attendance indicated that Facebook had bought into the idea, promoted primarily by conservatives, that mainstream outlets such as the New York Times are liberal and should be counterbalanced by right-leaning opinion outlets, said people familiar with his remarks.

Mr. Smith objected in particular to the presence of the Daily Caller, a conservative-leaning outlet whose journalistic standards he called into question. He said other conservative outlets present, such as the Weekly Standard, held higher standards.

Mr. Smith’s assessment of the Daily Caller’s journalistic standards was echoed by Lydia Polgreen, the editor in chief of HuffPost. She criticized the outlet for running a story that dredged up tweets, characterized by the Daily Caller as anti-Semitic, from one of HuffPost’s junior staffers before joining, according to people familiar with the matter. The tweets included a play on words for Anne Frank, the noted Jewish teenage diarist who was killed during the Holocaust.

Not surprising from a guy quoted as calling The Daily Caller’s journalism “trash." But far more telling is his denial that mainstream media outlets like the New York Times or the Washington Post have liberal bias that needs to be balanced by conservative media.

Who died and declared Ben Smith king? Why does he get to make the rules about which conservative organizations get to balance the coverage of legacy media and which don't?

Arguing that conservative websites shouldn't have a seat at the table to offer counterpoints to MSM coverage isn't defending journalistic integrity. It's defending establishment media and refusing to hold them accountable when they don't tell both sides of a story fairly.

This is why conservatives don't trust outlets like BuzzFeedNews or The Huffington Post. They have obvious left-wing slants — and they want to be the gatekeepers of journalism.


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