Facebook recently announced the launch of a new initiative, the Facebook News Tab. The new News Tab will feature about 200 publishers, whom Facebook will pay for their content. The featured stories on Facebook will be curated by an independent team of journalists.
Google, the largest search engine in the world, also features a Google News Tab. Both companies have faced considerable scrutiny over the way in which they do business and for their censorship of conservative content online.
This move by Facebook is likely not a positive indication for conservatives. In fact, the same day that Google launched its News Tab, Google was spending large amounts of money on various news projects worldwide. The issue is that the majority of these news projects are left leaning politically.
The new project, the Google News Initiative North American Innovation Challenge, announced 34 news projects to be funded on Oct. 25. Twenty-nine of these projects were located in the states, while the other four were in Canada. One of the projects was unlisted. The first name on the list for the U.S., The Dallas Morning News, ran editorials announcing its endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Beto O’Rourke for Senate in 2018.
One of the outlets, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, received $535,000 from liberal billionaire George Soros between the years 2010-2013. The Center runs op-eds that claims that “Dems Back More Openness” than Republicans.
Some of the other projects did not seem to have a political bent (or hadn’t been started yet.) But those that were more established, like The Salt Lake Tribune, were definitely tinged with blue. The Tribune endorsed President Obama back in 2012, and in 2017 called for Republican Senator Orrin Hatch to retire.
The projects receiving funding from Google are typically city daily papers with a left-leaning political bias.
Google also sent funds to the Lensfest Institute of Journalism, who is partnered with Facebook and the Washington Post. The Washington Post is owned by amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and is one of the largest left-leaning media publications.
