Facebook has hired Britney Spears' lawyer ahead of an upcoming TV show about the tech giant, and will take legal action if the show contains 'false narratives,' it says
- Facebook has hired a lawyer ahead of an upcoming TV show about the company's inner workings, per Deadline.
- The lawyer is Mathew Rosengart, whose clients include Britney Spears, Deadline reported.
Mathew Rosengart, the lawyer who fought against Britney Spears' conservatorship, is working with Facebook ahead of an upcoming TV show about the tech giant's tumultuous past five years, according to a report by Deadline.
Production company Anonymous Content is working on a drama series called "Doomsday Machine," which is based on "An Ugly Truth," a book by The New York Times journalists Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. The book, released in July, contained details about user-data abuses at Facebook, the spread of fake news, and Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The screen adaptation has cast Claire Foy as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, and is set to cover the company's past five years, including recent revelations that Facebook knew Instagram was bad for younger users.
Rosengart, who works for the law firm GreenbergTraurig and has represented many high-profile clients, wrote to the producers on Monday in an attempt to stop what he called the book's "grossly misleading characterization" being repeated in the TV show, according to Deadline's report.
In a letter to Anonymous Content CEO Dawn Olmstead, Rosengart said that the book had "a false narrative" and "was based on cherry-picked accounts from selective interviews, many from disgruntled individuals who were biased and otherwise lacked credibility," per Deadline.
He added that the book's authors and editors had "baldly rejected" accounts from numerous Facebook executives. The book was "replete with false and defamatory statements, characterizations, and implications about Facebook and its leadership and also places Facebook and its leaders in a 'false light,' in violation of California law," Rosengart said.
He told Olmstead that if the TV show included false statements, characterizations, and implications without appropriate nuance and context, "Facebook will take all appropriate legal action."
Anonymous Content could create the series "without reliance on the absurd characterizations and false narratives of the Book," Rosengart added. He said that Facebook would consider working with Anonymous Content to ensure the show's accuracy.
"Facebook's allegations about the reporting in our book, An Ugly Truth, which published in July, have taken us by surprise," Frankel and Kang told Insider in a statement. "We conducted an extensive, thorough fact-checking process with the company, and gave Facebook an opportunity to correct any errors."
The authors said the book was based on more than a thousand hours of interviews with more than 400 people, including Facebook executives, former and current employees, and investors in and advisers of Facebook. They also noted that they conducted interviews with more than 100 lawmakers and regulators and their aides, consumer and privacy advocates, and academics in the US, Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia.
"We stand by our work, and by our sources," Frankel and Kang said.
Anonymous Content and Facebook didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
Facebook currently has much more to worry about than just "An Ugly Truth."
The Wall Street Journal has published a series of articles over the last month based on leaked documents from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The stories covered its fading popularity with teens, its reported problems stopping hate speech, and XCheck, a system that reportedly protects elite users like politicians and celebrities from being reprimanded for breaking content rules.
On Monday, 17 US news organizations published "The Facebook Papers," a series of articles based on the leaked documents and interviews with former Facebook staffers.