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Facebook has said in the past that the module on the site, which highlights subjects and a brief explanation next to lighting mark arrows, is algorithmically selected. | AP Conservative news sites lash out at Facebook over bias claims

Conservative news sites are lashing out at Facebook after a report on Monday alleged that contractors for the social media giant were told to minimize links to their sites in its "trending news" column.

In statements to POLITICO, several right-leaning media outlets said they have no clear evidence of the practice, but that they long believed they were being discriminated against and hope Facebook to remedy any bias.

Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow said that while Breitbart News has "remained in the top 25 Facebook publishers for six months," the Gizmodo report confirms what "conservatives have long suspected: Facebook's trending news artificially mutes conservatives and amplifies progressives."

"Facebook claims its algorithm simply populates 'topics that have recently become popular on Facebook' in its trending news section, but now we know that’s not true," Marlow said in an email. "In a spirit of transparency and community, we invite Mark Zuckerberg to do a Facebook Live interview with Breitbart News Tech Editor Milo Yiannopoulos to explain to the tens of millions of conservatives on Facebook why they’re being discriminated against."

RedState managing editor Leon Wolf said they haven't seen evidence of discrimination but would be "extremely disappointed if a supposed honest broker of online news was putting a finger on the scales to harm conservative viewpoints."

"We are glad that increased attention is being paid to the tremendous influence that Facebook wields in the way people consume their news, and are hopeful that, at the end of the day, Facebook will honor its commitment to its users to be an honest broker of news content," Wolf said.

Washington Examiner editorial director Hugo Gordon said the report is "obviously of considerable interest to us" and they plan to work with Facebook "to ensure Washington Examiner's valuable content gets the attention it obviously deserves."

Newsmax executive editor Ken Chandler said that while there isn’t hard evidence, “we don’t think we’re getting the exposure we deserve on some of our stories.”

“We don’t generally subscribe to the view that Facebook or even Google are out to get conservatives, but it seems like with Facebook there have been some issues,” he told POLITICO.

Chandler says Newsmax plans to work with Facebook to resolve the issue.

Daily Caller executive editor Vince Coglianese said in an email that "it's extremely important for news consumers to understand" that sites like Facebook exercise "incredible control over what news actually gets delivered."

Coglianese said they've been surprised in the past to find that Facebook has delivered millions of views to some of its entertainment coverage, but not nearly the same as its political coverage.

"In March, for example, Facebook delivered nearly 5 million page views to this piece alone: Pink Just Blew Kim Kardashian Away With This Sobering Message. And that's not the first time Facebook has awarded our entertainment coverage with ridiculous traffic.Compare that to our political coverage, which fetched about 10 million page views during the same month -- from all sources," he said. "If this week's reports are true, Facebook's real disservice is to its users, who aren't even being delivered the content they signed up for in the first place."

The story began after a former Facebook employee told Gizmodo that employees prevented news from conservative news outlets and news about conservative politics from appearing in Facebook’s trending news column.

The former employee, a political conservative who worked as a news curator for the social network, told Gizmodo that the practice prevented news about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder, among others, from being included in the trending section despite their popularity.

The source said that individual curators determined which stories would appear on Facebook’s trending section, and that conservative news outlets were routinely left out. Another former employee, who worked on the social network’s trending news desk, said that the suppression came because the human curation team was “doing it subjectively.”

“It just depends on who the curator is and what time of day it is,” the person said. Facebook managers also instructed employees to add stories that were not trending by “injecting” the topic into the trending box, and prevent stories about Facebook from trending on the site, the people said.

The company has said in the past that the module on the site, which highlights subjects and a brief explanation next to lighting mark arrows, is algorithmically selected.

In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said they have specific guidelines to prevent bias:

"We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. Trending Topics shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or on news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics."

UPDATE 5/10/2016:

In a lengthy Facebook post, Tom Stocky, whose team is responsible for the Trending Topics section, said they have found "no evidence that the anonymous allegations are true."

"There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics" Stocky wrote. "We have in place strict guidelines for our trending topic reviewers as they audit topics surfaced algorithmically: reviewers are required to accept topics that reflect real world events, and are instructed to disregard junk or duplicate topics, hoaxes, or subjects with insufficient sources. Facebook does not allow or advise our reviewers to systematically discriminate against sources of any ideological origin and we've designed our tools to make that technically not feasible. At the same time, our reviewers' actions are logged and reviewed, and violating our guidelines is a fireable offense.