Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg held a meeting with top conservative commentators and media luminaries on Wednesday, seeking to allay fears, and defuse charges, of Trending Topics workers suppressing conservative news stories on his worldwide media platform.

Conservative PowWow

The meeting included some famous talking heads among the 16-person conservative group. According to CNN Money, Glenn Beck, Jim DeMint, SE Cupp, Dana Perino, and Tucker Carlson were all part of the powwow hosted by Zuckerberg at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters.

Zuckerberg was seeking to address accusations, previously reported by Latin Post, that first hit the web last week when Gizmodo published an exposé alleging habitual suppression of conservative news topics and conservative media sources in Facebook's Trending Topics, based on interviews with anonymous former workers in the project.

After the meeting, Zuckerberg posted a statement assuring his commitment to upholding standards against political biases in its ranking of popular news topics.

"I know many conservatives don't trust that our platform surfaces content without a political bias," wrote the CEO of Facebook. "I wanted to hear their concerns personally and have an open conversation about how we can build trust. I want to do everything I can to make sure our teams uphold the integrity of our products."

He later added, "It's important that Facebook remains a platform for all ideas and that we continue to give every person a voice."

A Serious Meeting

According to conservative columnist SE Cupp, who spoke after the meeting with her colleagues at CNN about the encounter, Zucerkberg seemed genuinely interested in learning from the pundits' viewpoints.

"It did not, to me, feel like a photo op," said Cupp. "I got a very strong sense of concern and curiosity about our take on this problem."

Cupp noted that the famously busy Zuckerberg let the meeting run long, another 15 minutes after an aide mentioned to him an hour in that they were out of time, and noted that he was "not at all dismissive" about their concerns.

Another conservative voice, Kristen Soltis Anderson, said the meeting was "civil" but "frank."

Unconscious Liberal Bias?

In the meeting, according to Anderson's account, she expressed problem of unconscious bias, especially in a generally liberal-leaning industry such as Northern California's high tech sector.

"If you want to be a neutral filter for content -- which we think you do -- that's great," recounted Anderson to ReCode. "But people write code. People are playing a role to fill in the gaps, because AI is not there yet."

"Most assumed Facebook is not operating in bad faith but wanted to raise the issue on unconscious bias where it can crop up," said Anderson on the position she and her compatriots expressed.

"Silicon Valley has a reputation for being liberal. But the Facebook community includes more than 1.6 billion people of every background and ideology -- from liberal to conservative and everything in between," Zuckerberg gently countered in his statement after the meeting.

"We've built Facebook to be a platform for all ideas. Our community's success depends on everyone feeling comfortable sharing anything they want," he continued. "It doesn't make sense for our mission or our business to suppress political content or prevent anyone from seeing what matters most to them."

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