The New York Times reportedly let Facebook delete an unflattering reference to its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, in an Internet version of a story about the departure of chief information security officer Alex Stamos.
The privilege has legal experts raising antitrust concerns, Law & Crime reported Tuesday.
In a Monday night story on the pending exit of Stamos — the official mostly behind tracking down the Russian troll farm influence and illicit campaign-related advertising facilitated through Facebook — the Times mentioned Sandberg's "consternation" at his efforts to make Facebook more transparent about Russian trolls' electoral interference.
By Tuesday morning, Sandberg's name was gone — replaced by a sentence noting Stamos' transparency efforts were "met with resistance by colleagues."
Twitter took notice, including Kurt Walters, the campaign director for Demand Progress, who noted the deletion came without a correction or clarification from the Times.
One of three reporters on the story, Nicole Perioth, confirmed the change occurred after Facebook's public relations team reached out to the Times after the story was published, but said it was a practice the Times "regularly" engages in, Law & Crime reported.
Matt Stoller of Open Markets Institute, which focuses on anti-trust and monopoly issues, tweeted "this is what the use of Facebook's hard power looks like."
Jeff Hauser an anti-trust expert at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Law & Crime the Times "faces risks every time they report on Facebook in a way that reflects badly on Facebook."
"Facebook's ability to flex its muscles over even the legendary New York Times should scare us about what they can do to smaller outlets contemplating negative coverage of Facebook practices," he told the outlet.
Law and Crime included an archive of the original The New York Times story, and the change.
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