Craig Silverman Sends CEN Memo Calling Journalism Without Borders Possibly A Scam

This document is a 19 February 2015 BuzzFeed email from Craig Silverman to Alan White, Tom Phillips and Tanya Chen with the subject “CEN memo”, introducing a document he had prepared about Central European News and Journalism Without Borders. It records Silverman saying he had put together “a bunch of info” and that one “really notable element” was his review of a charity Michael Leidig claimed to have started, Journalism Without Borders, which he said “may be a scam”, while also admitting he was “not hundred percent certain yet” but believed there were “so many shady aspects”. The email also sits in the same chain as the attached “CEN memo”/“pattern of behaviour” document, which treated the Chinese KFC story as a confirmed fake and used the quotes and phrases such as “stop off” and “off sick” as red flags, even though the wider problem was one of language, translation, sourcing and whether the story had actually been properly checked at source. It is relevant because it shows Silverman expanding the CEN investigation beyond disputed viral stories into a broader attempt to frame associated projects and charitable/public-interest activity as suspicious, while using the KFC story and quote-language assumptions as part of a wider “pattern of behaviour” narrative before the underlying Chinese-source material had been properly resolved.

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