This 22 April 2015 email chain shows Alan White and Robert Colvile contacting BuzzFeed reporter Alison Vingiano about the Bieber bear attack story, which BuzzFeed had taken from CEN and published under her byline. White tells Vingiano that BuzzFeed had spent six months working on a story about a news agency “selling dubious stories to outlets”, but adds that BuzzFeed had bought some of the same stories itself and that one with her byline was “probably not true”. The tone is strikingly different from BuzzFeed’s approach to outside publishers. White reassures her that BuzzFeed’s news directors had been looped in, “there’s no blame going around so don’t worry”, and asks her to write an update or correction. Colvile then explains the standard warning note BuzzFeed planned to place on other CEN-based stories, saying BuzzFeed no longer viewed CEN as a “credible or trustworthy journalistic organisation” and had been unable to verify the articles independently. The document is significant because it shows a sharp contrast between BuzzFeed’s aggressive questioning of rival publishers over their use of CEN material and its gentle internal handling of a BuzzFeed reporter who had done the same thing. The issue was not that Vingiano personally did anything wrong, but that BuzzFeed treated its own publication of CEN material as an unfortunate transparency problem, while using equivalent conduct by competitors as part of a much harsher public case against CEN and the publishers that used it.