There is no one in the world more important to the future of journalism than Mark Zuckerberg. That should make anyone who cares about journalism very afraid.

Speaking to a group of reporters on Tuesday, Zuckerberg laid out a new program in which users would rank news outlets by trustworthiness. Facebook will then use that data to make changes to its News Feed, which has been overwhelmed by fake news in recent years. Back in January, Zuckerberg had said such a program was necessary because Facebook “struggled with ... how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division.”



Facebook is, in other words, laying the responsibility on users for what appears on the News Feed. Combined with a recently announced “audit” that will address criticism that the social network suppresses conservative voices, Facebook’s latest moves point to a larger problem that’s bigger than fake news: Zuckerberg, desperate for conservative allies, has bought into the argument that mainstream news is fundamentally biased.



“I do think that in general, within a news organization, there is an opinion,” Zuckerberg told reporters. “I do think that a lot of what you all do, is have an opinion and have a view.” Zuckerberg, according to The Atlantic’s Adrianne LaFrance, said Facebook was a platform with “more opinions.” These opinions allow users to select those they find to be the most convincing. “It’s not about saying here’s one view; here’s the other side. You should decide where you want to be.”



As LaFrance writes, this is an argument that’s hostile to the idea of professional journalism: Zuckerberg is close to saying that The New York Times and your InfoWars-linking uncle are roughly analogous. He has consistently argued that Facebook is intent on knocking down the kinds of barriers that were once enforced by gatekeepers like the Times, all in a bid to connect people—an inherently good thing, in his view.

