BuzzFeed Still Searching For Its Own Usage of CEN Content One Day Before Publication

This 23 April 2015 email chain shows BuzzFeed still trying to work out what CEN material it had previously received, used or licensed just one day before publishing the CEN article. Robert Colvile tells BuzzFeed colleagues that CEN claimed BuzzFeed had been a subscriber to its newsfeed since January 2014, says this was “definitely inaccurate” for the UK team, and says CEN “did used to send us their emails” but that BuzzFeed had “repeatedly begged them to stop and eventually succeeded”. John Gara then says BuzzFeed had licensed CEN photographs, mainly animal pictures on the US side, and that Matt Tucker had licensed some photo sets in the UK. Alan White responds that this had “passed us by completely” and says BuzzFeed should do a Newscom search, while also saying he thought the list provided by BuzzFeed’s data team was everything. The document is significant because, at this late stage, BuzzFeed still had not put together that CEN material may have existed in multiple internal routes: email queues, picture licensing, captions, attachments, original text, Newscom, and material sent directly to staff such as Alan White by Matthew Tucker. It also shows BuzzFeed preparing to label its own previous posts with warning notices while still discovering what those posts were and how the material had entered BuzzFeed’s systems. The wider relevance is that Richard James had not clearly told the team that CEN content was available in raw form through earlier feeds or emails, but the failure was not only his: BuzzFeed's investigations team itself had received and licensed CEN material and still had not connected that fact with the possibility that the raw copy, captions and related assets were already sitting inside its own systems.

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