Facebook offers $100 million to prop up news organisations

Facebook says it’s dedicating $100 million to prop up news organisations pummelled by the financial effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Just two weeks ago, the company announced it would devote $1 million to aid local newsrooms in the U.S. and Canada covering the crisis. It turns out, Facebook was already thinking about giving far more.

“All these journalists are working around the clock under very difficult circumstances to try to keep us all informed,” Facebook Vice President for Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown, a former anchor for CNN and NBC News, told NPR. “And at the same time, their news organisations are struggling because of the economic fallout from the outbreak.”

Facebook will “try to ensure that the dollars keep flowing to those news organisations that are hardest hit in the moment that we so desperately need them,” she said.

source npr.org