How Much Disclosure About an Op-Ed Author Is Required? - The New York Times

Ever since the election, there’s been endless finger-pointing at Facebook by those who blame it for letting malicious “fake news” onto its social platform. So it must have been refreshing for opinion editors at The New York Times to have a piece that actually gave Facebook a bit of a break. The piece, by the journalist Jessica Lessin, argued that Facebook should not be expected to accept the type of fact-checking responsibilities that some critics say should come with being the dominant news aggregator. “No matter how many editors Facebook hired, it would be unable to monitor the volume of information that flows through its site, and it would be similarly impossible for readers to verify what was checked,” she wrote. Who is this woman brave enough to come forward in Facebook’s defense? Lessin’s tagline identifies her as the founder of a technology website, The Information. And near the end of her piece, she mentions in passing that her husband briefly worked at Facebook. What neither L

Ever since the election, there’s been endless finger-pointing at Facebook by those who blame it for letting malicious “fake news” onto its social platform. So it must have been refreshing for opinion editors at The New York Times to have a piece that actually gave Facebook a bit of a break. The piece, by the journalist Jessica Lessin, argued that Facebook should not be expected to accept the type of fact-checking responsibilities that some critics say should come with being the dominant news aggregator. “No matter how many editors Facebook hired, it would be unable to monitor the volume of inf