BuzzFeed Editors Say They “Can’t Afford To Give Leidig Wriggle Room” As CEN Article Nears Legal Review

This internal BuzzFeed email chain from 23 March 2015 shows Alan White, Craig Silverman and Tom Phillips discussing edits to the draft CEN article shortly before it moved towards legal review and approach letters. The document is significant because it shows the article still being actively shaped around selected examples and negative CEN material late in the drafting process. White says he has replaced one example, “KFC girl”, with another, “knicker man”, because “we can show the working more on that”, and says another “whole other debunk” had been found on a Swedish site. He also asks the team to check both new examples and Craig Silverman’s “dodgy quotes” examples again because “we can’t afford to give Leidig wriggle room on this.” The chain also records Silverman saying he had inserted “another anti-CEN tweet” from a Guardian sub-editor beneath the Farhad Manjoo tweet, further showing how negative third-party commentary was being collected for inclusion. White also notes that BuzzFeed needed to be clear about its own use of CEN material, adding that he had placed a line early in the draft saying BuzzFeed had used CEN, with a list at the bottom of where and how, though he admitted there were “probably a couple” he had missed. The email is useful because it captures the story at the pre-publication editing stage, when the team was still swapping examples, adding anti-CEN commentary, preparing for legal review, and planning “no surprise” letters. It does not, on its own, show anything improper in checking the article carefully before publication. Its significance is that the internal language — including the concern that BuzzFeed could not “afford to give Leidig wriggle room” — shows the adversarial mindset around the story as it was being assembled, and helps document how the final article was being shaped before CEN was approached for comment.

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