Campbell Brown, the executive responsible for managing partnerships with news publishers at Meta (formerly known as Facebook), is leaving the company after seven years. Brown, a former anchor for NBC News and CNN, held the position of vice president of media partnerships at Meta. Her role included serving as a liaison between Meta and news publishers who relied on the platform to distribute their articles.
Meta announced that Brown’s team will be integrated into another group responsible for media and sports partnerships development and operations. This move comes as Meta has been investing heavily in its Reels short-video feature to compete with platforms like TikTok, signalling a shift away from news content on its social apps.
The decision to de-emphasise news has been met with criticism from some quarters, with critics suggesting that Meta’s shift is an attempt to avoid being seen as a gatekeeper for trusted information. Some lawmakers have also accused Meta of unfairly censoring conservative articles and voices.
Additionally, Meta has recently removed access to news content in Canada via its Facebook and Instagram apps due to disagreements with a law requiring tech platforms to pay fees to media outlets. The company argued that the law is based on an incorrect premise regarding its benefits from news content.
In September, Meta announced plans to “deprecate” its Facebook News tab in certain countries, including the U.K., France, and Germany, as part of ongoing efforts to align its investments with the services that users value the most. Facebook News was launched in 2019 as a dedicated space for users to access important news content.
