AP journalists around the world teamed up to mine The Facebook Papers — thousands of pages of internal company documents obtained by Frances Haugen, the former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower and the source for earlier reporting by The Wall Street Journal.
And as it so often does, AP took the lead on coordinating Monday’s embargoed reporting among 17 U.S. news outlets more more accustomed to competition than collaboration. AP also served as a liaison to a separate European consortium. The result was an overwhelming flood of insightful journalism from dozens of outlets on two continents, and potentially hundreds of stories in subsequent weeks as more documents become available.
Former Facebook employee Frances Haugen speaks during a Senate subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, Oct. 5, 2021. Haugen is the whistleblower who obtained thousands of pages of internal Facebook documents.
AP Photo / Alex Brandon
At a doctor’s office in Serrekunda, Gambia, Sept. 23, 2021, Oumie Nyassi shows a debunked video circulating on the internet showing a woman claiming she was magnetized after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Last spring, as false claims about vaccine safety threatened to undermine the world's response to COVID-19, researchers at Facebook wrote that they could reduce vaccine misinformation by tweaking how vaccine posts show up on newsfeeds or by turning off comments entirely. Despite internal documents showing these changes worked, Facebook was slow to take action.
AP Photo / Leo Correa
Flora Rebello Arduini adjusts an installation outside Parliament in London, Oct. 25, 2021, depicting Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg surfing on a wave of cash. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen was expected to testify to members of Parliament that the company puts profits ahead of public safety.
AP Photo / Kirsty Wigglesworth
Facebook’s logo is displayed in Paris, Jan. 17, 2017.
AP Photo / Thibault Camus
Some of the AP’s own stories stood out in that flood for their depth and storytelling. More than a dozen colleagues spent days poring over the documents in every region. These stories included a look at Facebook’s struggle to curb problematic content in other languages; how the company enabled the trafficking of Filipina housemaids; and examinations of Facebook’s failure to curtail misinformation on the 2020 Election and COVID-19 vaccines.