Craig Silverman Uses Emergent “Truthiness” Ratings As CEN Investigation Tool

This document is a 19 January 2015 BuzzFeed email exchange with the subject “CEN ad”, involving Craig Silverman, Alan White and Tom Phillips during the investigation into Central European News. It records White saying he had added several CEN-linked stories to Emergent, including stories that were debunked, partly verified, or still being examined to understand CEN’s methods, and saying that a Chinese speaker with Weibo experience was needed because many recent claims appeared to originate there. Silverman replies that the added stories still needed “truthiness” ratings, explaining that each link had to be rated in Emergent so the pages would show statistics and share counts, while also agreeing that a Chinese speaker seemed important. It is relevant because it shows Emergent being used not as a source of original reporting, but as a workflow tool for organising online claims, assigning “truthiness” ratings, generating stats and share counts, and building a searchable evidential structure around CEN-linked stories while the team still lacked the language skills needed to check any of the Chinese-source claims directly.

Source

Part of Central European News & Mike Leidig v BuzzFeed (US Second Circuit Libel Case) – BF Case Documents

Europe Media Published 1 May 2026 at 21:09 Source: 1 November 2016