🧵 1/Last Saturday, I attended @spj_tweets National Board meeting to urge the board to consider killing its training program with Facebook, which I described as an evil platform. Why? I was one of those trainers and didn't go beyond providing two training sessions.
🧵 2/ I joined the team of trainers because they were looking for Spanish speakers. Facebook has a foundation and they provide funding for programs like the one with SPJ where they work with journalists to train newsrooms and college students about this evil platform. Yes, evil.
🧵 3/ FB foundation also provides scholarships for college students and programs to mentor nonprofit leaders. It's truly disgusting how they are buying goodwill w/ money as they continue to ignore how FB has evolved into a tool to spread racism, hate, and propaganda.
🧵 4/ I have witnessed that myself. The people spreading that victims of the Stoneman Douglas HS masacre were not real students but actors. I saw racists posts during the protests and racial reckoning last year. And all the lies about election fraud. ...
🧵 5/ I have turned down the chance to train all this time because I'm disgusted. FB is a threat to democracy and civility. FB chooses money instead of doing the right thing. I'm still in the email chain where the latest discussion was about the new deck for training.
🧵 6/ I'm in awe that nobody as far as I know has raised any concerns about everything that has happened. Business as usual. But I can no longer be silent. I already asked NAHJ president to put FB on our agenda to discuss at our next meeting.
🧵 7/ As journalists and J-orgs, we need to have some standards and we have a moral and ethical obligation because folks that's all we have as journalists. We can't do this job and ask the public to trust us if we don't show integrity.
🧵 8/ Doing business with FB is selling your soul to the devil. We need to have a discussion about this and what we need to do moving forward.
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