BuzzFeed In Awe Of CEN’s “Mega Viral” China Story While Craig Silverman Prepares To Meet Ben Smith

This 14 January 2015 email chain shows Alan White and Tom Phillips discussing a CEN-linked China story about a wife allegedly cutting off her husband’s penis, with White describing it as “so hugely ridiculous mega viral” and noting that it was a “CEN story” even though MailOnline had not credited CEN. The document is significant because it records BuzzFeed staff closely tracking, analysing and reacting to the traffic value and spread of CEN material while they were also developing the BuzzFeed/CEN investigation. Phillips and White discuss pixelation, possible watermark removal, reverse image searches and source tracing, while Craig Silverman says he has loaded the story into Emergent and refers to content theft claims relayed by “the guy in Austria”. The chain also records Silverman saying he is due to “see Ben at 10:30” in New York on the same day, making it useful for establishing the timing of Silverman’s contact with Ben Smith while the CEN work, Emergent material and BuzzFeed’s interest in Silverman were converging. It should be read alongside other BuzzFeed/CEN client-use, Emergent and Silverman-budget documents, because it helps show the contradiction between BuzzFeed treating CEN material as high-value viral content and simultaneously building a public narrative that framed CEN as a discredited supplier of dubious stories.

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