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Facebook Hires Former Producer For ‘Fox & Friends’ To Help Curate News

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Chris White Tech Reporter
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Facebook is hiring a former Fox News employee who once worked as a producer for “Fox & Friends” to run editorial video strategy for the social media platform’s news tab, NBC reported Tuesday.

The company tapped former executive producer Jennifer Williams to fill a role in Facebook’s foray into the news industry, NBC’s Dylan Byers noted in a tweet. Facebook spokesman Andy Stone confirmed the hire and directed the Daily Caller News Foundation to Williams’ LinkedIn account.

Stone did not provide a statement beyond the confirmation. Byers cited an anonymous source who is familiar with the decision. (RELATED: Facebook Announces Effort To Clearly Mark Fake News Ahead Of 2020)

Williams was a senior producer with “Fox & Friends” between 1997 and 2009 before becoming an executive producer for Fox News’s “The Daily Briefing” with Dana Perino, according to her LinkedIn account.

The logos of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are seen in a combination photo from Reuters files. REUTERS/File Photos/File Photo

Facebook announced in October 2019 that it will give select users access to the feature news, which will include news from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, FOX News, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and others, WSJ reported in October.

“[T]he internet has disrupted the traditional business model for news, so I believe the major internet services have a responsibility to partner with news publishers to build sustainable long-term models to fund this important work,” CEO Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post that month.

Facebook will rely on an algorithm to curate news but suggested in a post in 2019 that the company has “progress to make before we can rely on technology alone to provide a quality news destination.” So-called curation experts will work alongside Facebook News’s team to help build out the Today’s Stories tab.

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