Early BuzzFeed Draft Frames CEN Stories Before Key Proof Questions Were Resolved

This 12 March 2015 email shows Alan White sending Tom Phillips an early draft summary of BuzzFeed’s case against CEN, with Phillips replying: “Yes this is cool.” The draft already contains much of the broad framing later used against CEN: that the agency allegedly picked up stories from foreign social networks, used images, added or exaggerated details, supplied quotes of uncertain origin, and fed stories into MailOnline, Metro, Mirror, The Telegraph, The Independent, HuffPost, Gawker and BuzzFeed itself. The document is significant because it shows the narrative being shaped at an early stage, more than a month before publication, while several examples were still unresolved or qualified. Some entries are presented as fake or exaggerated, but others are explicitly uncertain: the Lucita Sandoval section says it was “unclear how much of the copy was provided by the agency”; the KFC item suggests emailing the KFC China press office “just to see if we can verify”; the cat story is described as apparently true; and the college-fire example says there is “nothing to suggest anything improper has happened”. The evidential value is that BuzzFeed was already arranging a broad case against CEN from a mixed set of allegedly proven errors, suspicions, unresolved quote questions, stories that appeared true, and examples where the issue was process rather than falsity. It therefore belongs with the March 2015 drafting documents showing how the article’s “fake news” frame was being built before the supporting evidence had been fully tested, not through completed original reporting, but through material that would later be converted into the front-up/right-to-reply letter sent to CEN. (BuzzFeed_002831)

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