Facebook deactivated journalist’s account for posting story about sex offender

Radio station's news page was also taken down but restored after being told it was a "mistake".

Left, the message shown to local news journalist Kate Faulkner when she tries to log into Facebook telling her she is still in breach of community standards. Right, the sex offender story post that resulted in the bans, with a large image of his face. — Left, the message shown to journalist Kate Faulkner when she tries to log into Facebook. Right, the Kent Online story post that resulted in the bans.

Facebook deactivated the personal account of a local news journalist who posted a link to a story about a sex offender on the page of her employer.

A Facebook page for Iliffe-owned Kent radio station KMFM was also temporarily taken down for a “breach of community standards” after the story was posted on Saturday morning but was restored within just 20 minutes after a successful appeal.

Kate Faulkner is a newsreader and reporter for KMFM and part of her job involves posting links to the local stories that have been run on air on the broadcaster’s Facebook news page (separate to the main KMFM page).

Faulkner’s personal account was deactivated on Saturday and was only restored on Thursday afternoon after Press Gazette got in touch with the Meta press office.

Before that, although the KMFM page had been unblocked, Faulkner’s own appeal was rejected and she had been unable to get in touch with anyone from Meta herself. The action also took down her Instagram and Facebook Messenger accounts.

The case is reminiscent of independent local news publisher Leicester Gazette which last month had its account disabled by Facebook after being told its account “doesn’t follow our community standards on account integrity”. The newsbrand had its access restored after Press Gazette got in touch with Meta. Local news and specialist publishers have also been facing issues with Facebook removing story posts as spam.

Faulkner told Press Gazette before her account was restored: “It’s upsetting: one, I’m Australian living in the UK, so I used Facebook a lot to keep in touch with my friends and my family.

“But what upsets me the most, I think, is that somewhere my name is logged against these child sexual exploitation claims and that’s what’s really most upsetting to me, and I’d very much like that to not be the case.”

The story posted by Faulkner on the KMFM page was from sister title Kent Online, headlined: “Dover sex offender, Matthew Downing, jailed after fleeing to Surrey to use dark web to make indecent images of children.” The story was based on a press release from Kent Police.

While Faulkner’s account was down, when she tried to log in Facebook it said: “We’ve reviewed your account and found that it still doesn’t follow our community standards on child sexual exploitation. You cannot request another review of this decision.”

The message received by KMFM’s admin after successfully appealing the official page being taken down said: “We’ve found that our review team made a mistake when taking your content down. Thank you for taking the time to request a review and helping us improve our systems. Our priority is keeping the community safe and respectful, so sometimes we have to take precautions.”

Meanwhile, Facebook continues to allow scam investment pages which use the identities of high-profile journalists (such as CNN’s Richard Quest) in order promote financial advice groups on Whatsapp.