AP Vienna Correspondent Helps BuzzFeed Identify Hannes Urban In Austrian Charity Checks

This document is significant because it shows BuzzFeed had located an Associated Press article by Vanessa Guerra, the AP Vienna correspondent, about Hannes Urban and his Austrian charity work. The AP piece presented Urban as a credible one-man charity fundraiser whose small operation was making a real difference internationally. That matters because Urban was the person connected to the Austrian charity arrangement used to collect and distribute funds for Journalists Without Borders campaigns, making his credibility central to BuzzFeed’s charity/JWB line of inquiry. The document therefore shows that BuzzFeed had seen a properly reported, mainstream wire-service account supporting Urban’s legitimacy and the seriousness of his work, yet still continued to treat the charity arrangement as potentially suspicious or “dodgy” in the wider CEN investigation. Its evidential value is that BuzzFeed was not operating only in the absence of information: it had material from a reputable Austria-based AP correspondent that complicated the negative charity narrative, and this had to be disclosed later as part of the litigation record.

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