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Some
12 "conservative thought leaders" will join the meeting with
Zuckerberg on Wednesday, a Facebook spokesman said. Among the
invitees are media personality Glenn Beck, Fox News Channel's
"The Five" co-host Dana Perino and Zac Moffatt, co-founder of
Targeted Victory, a technology company that aims to bring
transparency to media buying.
Facebook came under fire last week when an unnamed former
employee told technology news website Gizmodo that workers often
omitted conservative political stories from the company's
"trending" list of topics.
Zuckerberg said Facebook has "found no evidence that this report
is true," but would continue to investigate. A U.S. Senate
committee has also opened an inquiry into Facebook's practices.
Beck, a former Fox News host, took to Facebook early Sunday to
say he is going to the meeting in Menlo Park, California, and
"it would be interesting to look him (Zuckerberg) in the eye as
he explains."
"While they are a private business and I support their right to
run it any way they desire without government interference,"
Beck said, "it would be wonderful if a tool like face book [sic]
INDEPENDENTLY CHOSE to hold up Freedom of speech and freedom of
association as a corporate principle."
On Friday, Facebook outlined its "Trending Topics" guidelines in
its media relations section and stated that reviewers are
neither allowed nor advised to discriminate against sources.
Facebook, now valued at around $350 billion, has become a bigger
source of news for its more than 1 billion daily active users.
Sixty-three percent of users, or 41 percent of all U.S. adults,
say they get news from the site, according to a study last year
by the Pew Research Center and the Knight Foundation.
(Reporting by Marcy Nicholson; Editing by Mary Milliken and
Chris Reese)
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