BuzzFeed Uses Leaked Confidential CEN Client Memo To Reinforce Its Position

This 4 May 2015 email chain is one of the more significant post-publication documents because it shows BuzzFeed receiving and discussing a confidential CEN memo that had been sent to CEN clients after the BuzzFeed article. The memo was intended to reassure clients that CEN had reviewed and strengthened its internal editorial procedures, including checks around contact details, original links, screenshots, original-language text, local source material and independent verification of reports from TV and radio. Instead, the memo was leaked to BuzzFeed, apparently by a senior figure at Associated Newspapers, whose titles were both CEN clients and direct commercial rivals in the viral-news market. Alan White’s response was dismissive, saying he was “very happy for them”, before suggesting BuzzFeed could either write a fresh story on the memo or save it for the Polish follow-up, “which is definitely happening”. The evidential importance is that BuzzFeed treated a private client-reassurance memo not as evidence of CEN trying to improve and protect clients, but as material that could be used to strengthen BuzzFeed’s own narrative. According to Mike Leidig, CEN founder, the same paperwork was later used when CEN sought corrections, with BuzzFeed pointing to CEN’s procedural changes as proof that the original article must have been right: in effect, “if nothing was wrong, why would CEN be changing anything?” That interpretation stripped the memo of its context. A company under attack by a well-funded global publisher, then valued or soon to be valued at around USD 1.7 billion, was trying to reassure clients and tighten procedure after serious allegations. BuzzFeed instead used the leaked memo as further ammunition, despite the fact that it had come from within a client/commercial-rival environment and had been written for a confidential business purpose. The document is therefore important not just for what CEN said to clients, but for what BuzzFeed’s handling of the leak shows about the post-publication campaign: confidential client communications were being fed back to the reporters, interpreted against CEN, and then considered for use in further pressure on CEN and its commercial relationships. [Needs citation: later correction/CEN correspondence should be cross-referenced when available to show how this memo was used by BuzzFeed as justification for resisting corrections.]

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