China Slams Facebook’s State Media Guidelines, Says It is Being Unfairly Focused

Pages managed by information company Xinhua and the fiery nationalist tabloid International Occasions are actually labelled “China state-controlled media”, after a coverage change by the world’s largest social platform.

Facebook’s State Media Guidelines mentioned it can add comparable labels to pages and ads run by media retailers topic to editorial affect and monetary backing by governments, together with Russian state broadcaster RT.

The transfer comes with Fb below scrutiny for failing for stem overseas interference within the 2016 US election, and after heated debate over how the community handles misinformation and inflammatory posts — together with from US President Donald Trump.

However China’s overseas ministry spokesman Geng Shuang accused Fb of selective enforcement and mentioned he hoped the corporate would “abandon its ideological prejudice”.

Overseas media retailers “must be given equal therapy” so long as they adjust to native legal guidelines, he added.

Fb’s definition of state-controlled media consists of affect over editorial content material in addition to monetary backing of retailers, mentioned the platform’s cybersecurity chief Nathaniel Gleicher.

“Individuals ought to know if the information they learn is coming from a publication that could be below the affect of a authorities,” he wrote in a Thursday weblog put up asserting the brand new coverage.

Relations between China and america have worsened on a number of fronts in current months, with the 2 governments expelling journalists in tit-for-tat strikes and buying and selling barbs over the coronavirus outbreak and human rights.