American Conservative Union Chairman Rejects Facebook Meeting Invite

American Conservative Union head Matt Schlapp has rejected an invite by Facebook to meet in the wake of a report the social media website suppressed conservative news stories, the Daily Caller reports.

Schlapp, who also heads the Conservative Political Action Conference, declares the issue is bigger than "merely a communications problem," the Daily Caller reports.

"If Facebook wants the benefit of the doubt, they need to start with complete transparency on how decisions are made concerning its newsfeeds," Schlapp said in a statement to the Daily Caller. "This is much bigger than just having a meeting with 'leading conservatives' and winning the day’s news cycle."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is meeting Wedesday with conservative media representatives – including Glenn Beck, Fox News' host Dana Perino and CNN conservative commentator S.E. Cupp – to address the political bias allegations.
 
Beck, in a Facebook post Sunday, wrote "Mark wanted to meet with 8 or 10 of us to explain what happened and assure us that it won't happen again," adding, "it would be a win for all voices if we can come to a place of real trust with this powerful tool."

But Schlapp said the bias allegations, first uncovered by Gizmodo, "has exposed the rift between Facebook’s liberal perspective and the hundreds of millions of Americans who self-identify as conservative."

"Facebook has a history of agitating against conservatives and conservative policies, especially when it comes to ACU’s own conference, CPAC," he charges.

Schlapp alleges the Facebook staff has admitted to suppressing content about CPAC, has rejected ACU’s overtures for the social media site to play "a meaningful role at CPAC" and that "the deck is stacked."

"CPAC content egregiously underperforms on Facebook compared to Twitter and other platforms by factors of 10," Schlapp tells the Daily Caller.

According to the Daily Caller, the ACU found, for example, that in February, a news release announcing conservative talk show host Dana Loesch would be a guest speaker at the annual CPAC meeting got 1,189 views on Facebook, but was seen 48,697 times on Twitter.

And when it sent out a news release that Donald Trump was going to skip the annual gathering, the item had 29,147 views on Facebook, while on Twitter it was viewed 745,035 times.

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