Campbell Brown To Lead News Partnerships For Facebook

Campbell Brown

Facebook has hired former CNN host Campbell Brown to lead its News Partnerships team. “This is a different role for me,” Brown notes in a post on the social giant.

In her new role, Brown will be expected to help news organizations and journalists work more closely with Facebook, reports MediaPost.

Brown -- who previously served as a correspondent for NBC News -- noted the news media business is currently undergoing a fundamental shift. More to the point, she admitted that Facebook is responsible for much of that shift.

“Facebook is a major part of this transformation,” she said. “This change comes with enormous challenges for journalists, but also with great opportunities.”

The appointment comes at a time when many in the media business are trying to figure out Facebook, and whether it is a friend or foe. In a Live video one-on-one chat with COO Sheryl Sandberg, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently called Facebook “a new kind of platform.”

Whatever that means, Facebook executives know they increasingly serve as gatekeepers between publishers and readers. Among other implications, the social giant has slowly realized it is at least partially responsible for policing the veracity of the content that flows through its platform.

As such, in partnership with top third-party fact-checking organizations, Facebook just recently launched a full-frontal attack on so-called “fake news.”