Meta and media spar worsens India's trust deficit

Tech giants and news organizations squabbling over stories is nothing new. Companies often complain to reporters about getting the nuances wrong and usually express their dismay "officially". Journalists generally agree to include rebuttals as long as the companies can offer the same recorded claims. Companies don't follow through and the conversation usually stops there and the world never finds out what is most often a very mundane thing.

This is one of the factors that makes Indian media outlet The Wire's Instagram reporting this week and Meta's responses stand out. Lawmakers and newsrooms in the United States and India are closely watching one of a newsroom's strangest episodes and its subject is publicly challenging - and doubling down on its claims.

The Wire, an organization known for holding the ruling party to account like very few do, reported on Monday that Facebook had given the ruling party's top digital agent, the BJP, the unchecked ability to remove content from the platform. The report, which relies on what it claims to be internal documents, appears to advance the WSJ's report on an internal company program called XCheck, where Facebook shields millions of VIP users from the enforcement process. business standard.

Meta insists that the XCheck program "has nothing to do with being able to report messages" and has publicly called the documents "fabricated". Andy Stone, Meta Communications, tweeted: “The posts in question were revealed for review by automated systems, not humans. And the underlying documentation appears to have been fabricated."

The unexpected twist came on Tuesday, when Wire doubled down on its reporting, claiming to include a photo that appeared to show an alleged email Stone sent to internal teams in which he asks members about the leaked documents. The photo also shows that Facebook maintains a watch list of journalists.

Wire's answer immediately went viral for several hours and most people believed it. In a way that sets it apart from most other companies, Facebook has earned a reputation where its denials aren't really taken at face value. That's why at least two major Indian outlets have chosen not to acknowledge Wire's story - or Meta's denials of those reporting, according to two people familiar with the matter. (Although to its credit, Facebook is suing the Indian government over users' right to privacy.)

The case was considered closed and it emerged that Facebook, which identifies India as its biggest market by users, was again trying to mislead.

But the life of the drama has been extended as Meta has since doubled down on his denial, claiming Meta's Stone's alleged email in the story is "fake".

Guy Rosen, Head of Security Information at Meta, said: "The supposed email address it was sent from isn't even Stone's current email address, and the Nor is the "to" address the one we use here. There is no such email. This same story refers to an inside reporter's "watch list." there is no such list."

Facebook, like many other companies, keeps files on journalists. ( (Manish) knows this because they accidentally sent me the link to one about five years ago. Meta also keeps email addresses with the fb.com domain. (The generic press contact remains an email fb.com. Although this is not proof that Stone is still actively using fb.com email.)

Wire sticks to its reporting. However, if Meta turns out to be right, inducing a reputable media outlet to publish a bombshell story that could have been easily refuted by a large megacorporation like Meta would damage the credibility of the press across India at a time when the media in the countries are increasingly grappling with a series of existential crises. Who would have the least to lose and the most to gain here, especially if the goal was to undermine credibility...