BuzzFeed Staff Flag CEN-Sourced MailOnline Story Hours After “Debunking” CEN

Internal BuzzFeed Email Showing CEN Material Still Being Flagged After Publication This disclosed BuzzFeed email is important because it shows that, even after BuzzFeed had published “The King of Bullsht News” and internally described CEN as discredited, CEN-sourced material was still being circulated inside BuzzFeed as potential editorial content. The email was sent on 24 April 2015 at 7:43pm, only hours after BuzzFeed’s article about CEN and Michael Leidig had been published. It concerned a MailOnline story with the subject line: “Transgender woman stripped, shaved and ‘pulverized’ by police sparking outrage | Daily Mail Online.” BuzzFeed’s regional director for America, Conz Preti, had earlier flagged the MailOnline article to BuzzFeed’s LGBT team, writing: “Everyone’s talking about this in BR, maybe not worth covering right now but wanted to flag.” Reporter Nicolas Mora then replied: “So the pics come from CEN, which we just totally debunked and disavowed as a source. Just FYI.” The importance of the email is that it captures the contradiction inside BuzzFeed immediately after publication. On the one hand, BuzzFeed had publicly attacked CEN as a discredited source. On the other, a CEN-linked MailOnline story was still being noticed and circulated internally because it was newsworthy and being talked about in Brazil. For the book, this document supports the point that CEN’s “Bullsht News” did not simply stop being attractive once BuzzFeed had published its allegations. Even inside BuzzFeed, the material remained visible, relevant and potentially useful, while the public article had already damaged CEN’s reputation and helped reduce Michael Leidig’s wider journalistic work to the tabloid material that was only one part of the agency’s output.

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