Facebook will invest US $ 300 million in support of local journalism

Facebook will invest US $ 300 million in support of local journalism

The measure comes in the midst of questioning these platforms for their almost monopoly of online advertising, which hinders the transition from media to digital.

Facebook will invest  US $ 300 million in the next three years in journalistic projects, mainly to favor local information, which suffers most from the effects of the digital revolution, the company announced on Tuesday.

"We will continue the fight against false information (fake news), misinformation and low quality information," explained Campbell Brown , vice president in charge of the relationship with the media, in an entry posted on the social network itself.

"We have the opportunity and the responsibility to help local media grow and succeed," he added. 

The measure comes in the midst of questioning platforms because of their almost monopoly of online advertising, which makes the transition from media to digital difficult.

The platform, which has 2,200 million active users, will create, among other things, a special fund of US $ 5 million in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center to finance multimedia report projects in local media.

In January 2017 the social network had presented the Facebook Journalism Project  to "strengthen the links" of the platform with the media industry.

At that time, the objective was to offer the media solutions to improve the income they obtained from their Facebook presence and to develop exchanges between the social network and the media. The amount invested in this initiative was not disclosed. 

In March 2018, Google had also announced 300 million dollars for a series of projects designed to combat false information and support the media considered reliable.