Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg will host a group of US conservative political and media figures to his company's headquarters this week.  It follows last week's accusations by former employees that Facebook manipulated its "trending" section to exclude news that would be of interest to conservatives.

Wednesday's meeting is expected to include commentator and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute think-tank, Republican party operative Zac Moffatt, and CNN commentator SE Cupp. 

"Conservatives and Silicon Valley actually come down on the same side of many issues and share some common concerns," claimed Ms. Cupp.  "I'm sure we'll find plenty to talk about, and I'm honored to have been included," she added.

Facebook says its investigation so far has found no evidence backing up the claims that appeared last week.  A self-proclaimed former Facebook news editor claimed that coworkers suppressed stories about politicians Mitt Romney and Rand Paul, the annual far-right wing CPAC conference, and other conservative topics from the "trending" section.  The source also claimed that others were told to manipulate the "trending" section to include stories that weren't popular enough to warrant inclusion. 

Facebook says the claims are bunk, and the world's biggest online news provider "does not allow or advise our reviewers to discriminate against sources of any political origin, period".  The "trending" section does not rely on algorithms that measure data traffic to determine what goes in - the trending topics team can decide to "inject" or "blacklist" topics for specific reasons - but not because of political content.

"If we find anything against our principles, you have my commitment that we will take additional steps to address it," Zuckerberg said last week.

To be honest, I've never seen anything from Socialist Alternative, The Nation, Jacobin, New Matilda, Green-Left Weekly, New Statesman, or any other Left-wing publication in the "trending" section.  So it seems unreasonable to assume that only right-wing stories were turned back in favor of mainstream news and entertainment coverage.