BuzzFeed Editors Discuss How To “Keep Up The Pressure” On CEN Clients After Publication

This BuzzFeed disclosure document is a two-page internal email chain from 25 April 2015, the day BuzzFeed published its article about CEN and Mike Leidig. The thread begins with Luke Lewis asking: “So, what comes next? How do we follow up keep up the pressure? If any one of these publishers DOESN’T immediately stop dealing with CEN it looks terrible for them. Should we ring round on Monday?” Robert Colvile replies with a list of proposed follow-up actions, including trying to “stir up wider interest” with Roy Greenslade and other media commentators, finding out “what Press Gazette were smoking”, pursuing the Journalism Without Borders angle, asking CEN for details of its internal investigation or doing a breakout news post on it, demanding that CEN appoint an independent figure to review its output, continuing to collect examples, and checking with the Mail and Mirror on whether they would continue using CEN content. Craig Silverman then says he still wants to help and has blocked time on Monday to push the charity/JWB angle, adding that the key issue is getting Hannes Urban and the lawyer identified by Leidig to talk. Heidi Blake later congratulates the team on making “a great splash”, says the reaction she has seen has praised the “forensic way” the article “dismantled the CEN fiction machine”, and agrees that the charity is “the next big frontier”, suggesting they track down the people JWB said it was raising money for and ask whether they had “ever seen a penny”. The document is significant because it shows that publication was not treated internally as the end of the journalistic process, but as the starting point for further pressure on CEN, its publishing partners, and its associated Journalism Without Borders project. It is also important because the language moves beyond simply standing by a published article: the team discusses how to maintain pressure, encourage publishers to stop dealing with CEN, generate wider media interest, pursue follow-up angles, and enjoy the “fallout”. This supports the argument that the article functioned not only as a reputational attack but also as a commercial and operational pressure campaign aimed at the relationships on which CEN depended. The document should be read alongside the shorter related “keep up the pressure” reference where Luke Lewis’s initial question appears, but this fuller thread is more revealing because it shows the wider response from Colvile, Silverman and Blake, including proposed follow-up tactics and the shift towards JWB.

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