>I'm not comfortable with any given group of people doing such sort of approval

Historically, that's exactly what newspaper editors did. The algorithmic approach has the potential to offer greater transparency, but not if the algorithm isn't published.

Furthermore, now that Facebook is in a near-monopolistic position when it comes to picking winners and losers in what we read, acknowledging that fact publicly would be the bare-minimum first step they could take towards accountability. Then we can have a more open discussion about how news stories ought to be judged and propagated (or not).