Facebook is funding news programs from CNN, Fox News, Univision and others

@anthonyha / 9:17 am PDT • June 6, 2018

Facebook has unveiled its initial lineup of news programming that will be airing in a dedicated section of Watch, the original video content initiative the social network launched last year.

While these shows are being produced by outside media organizations, it’s actually Facebook that’s funding them. In a blog post, Head of News Partnerships Campbell Brown described this as an extension of the company’s announcement in January that it would prioritize meaningful social interaction over publisher content.

While that decision took a toll on digital publishers, Brown echoes CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s rationale for the move, saying that while there will be less news in users’ feeds, what remains should be “trustworthy, informative, and local.”

Here’s how Brown describes the news initiative:

This first lineup of funded shows includes news publishers from broadcast to digital native, national and local. The shows will be hosted by award-winning journalists, as well as new faces, and the formats will vary from a mix of daily briefings, weekly deep dives, and live breaking news coverage. They’ll debut later this summer, and we’ll announce additional shows in the coming weeks. We will work closely with our publisher partners to experiment with these different formats to understand what works, and they will have full editorial control of their shows.

The shows include:

A daily news show from ABC News
“Chasing Corruption,” a series from Alabama’s Advance Local that interviews watchdog journalists
A weekly explainer program from ATTN:
CNN’s “Anderson Cooper Full Circle,” a weekday news brief featuring Cooper and guests
Daily updates from Fox News’ Shepard Smith and others
A twice-weekly show from Mic
Univision’s “Real America with Jorge Ramos,” where Ramos interviews immigrants from diverse backgrounds. Univision will also air a daily news roundup in Spanish.