BuzzFeed Celebrates Silverman’s “Instant” CEN Scoop Despite Months Of Prior Work

This 25 April 2015 email chain shows Ben Smith forwarding Craig Silverman, Scott Lamb and others a tweet praising Silverman’s new BuzzFeed role after the publication of the CEN article. The tweet says it “didn’t take long” for the new BuzzFeed hire to produce a “great piece”, linking to the CEN investigation. Silverman replies: “Time to work the next one. And we’re already talking about follow ups re: CEN”, and Scott Lamb replies: “Nice.” The document is significant because it shows BuzzFeed internally enjoying the presentation of the CEN article as an immediate success connected to Silverman’s arrival, even though the investigation had already been under way for months and was largely built through earlier online searches, spreadsheets, Emergent claim-tracking, publisher trails and attempts to find material that supported the planned framing. It also still shows Silverman signing with his Emergent, Tow Center and Poynter / Regret the Error credentials, underlining the overlap between his outside verification profile and BuzzFeed’s use of the CEN article as a launch-stage achievement. The evidential value is that the team were not treating the article as the end of a careful fact-finding process, but as a successful splash that could be followed up immediately, despite the unresolved proof issues shown elsewhere in the disclosure 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