Media — both on the left and right — are pressing Facebook to define what journalism is

BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith was confused as hell and he wasn’t going to take it anymore. So while he’s not exactly Howard Beale, the famously pugnacious editor of BuzzFeed pressed hard recently on global news partnerships head Campbell Brown to explain how Facebook defines journalism and who practices it. The focus of his ire was the presence of six conservative publications at a biannual meeting that Brown ran recently with a group of editors and publishers Facebook works with. While Smith had no issue with outlets like the National Review and the Weekly Standard — mainstream conservative media that he lauded — he wondered out loud why “trash” like the Daily Caller was allowed there and that Facebook was false-balancing right versus left media outlets. Neil Patel, the Daily Caller's current publisher, was also present at the Facebook meeting, obviously disagreed with Smith’s assessment and questioned why he brought it up now rather than at many previous Facebook media meetings the Daily Caller staff had attended, apparently.