
Facebook disputes a former employee's claim that editors excluded conservative stories from a 'trending' feed, but the site reflects a broader trend of growing political polarization, researchers say.
At the 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner, host Stephen Colbert famously asserted that “reality has a well known liberal bias.”
His claim was in jest, but a former Facebook employee’s contention that the site’s “news curators” routinely omitted popular conservative news from its “trending news” feed has reignited a long-running debate about online news, media bias, and what political scientists say is a trend toward increasing political polarization.
For what's increasingly a primary news source for its 1 billion daily users, Facebook could be a significant influence on what is considered true in a US election year.