Tom Phillips Drafts CEN Right-To-Reply Letter For Alan White

This 15 April 2015 document appears to show Tom Phillips passing Alan White the detailed right-to-reply wording to be sent to Mike Leidig before publication of BuzzFeed’s CEN article. The draft letter says BuzzFeed was preparing to report that CEN was responsible for circulating a series of stories later alleged to be false in part or in full, and then sets out a long list of allegations and questions covering disputed stories, including the Lucita Sandoval story, picture rights, quote provenance, Journalists Without Borders, and the Bylinebandit Wikipedia issue. The document is significant because it shows the formal “front-up” version of the allegations being assembled before publication, with BuzzFeed presenting a large number of complex claims for response while saying it needed an answer by 5pm on 21 April. It is also relevant to the later timing issue: after this 15 April approach did not produce the response BuzzFeed wanted, the process appears to have been revived and compressed immediately before publication, leaving CEN to deal with a dense allegation schedule at the end of a long reporting process rather than through a properly developed exchange on each point.

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