Craig Silverman Presses Redacted Austrian Media Contact For On-Record Criticism Of Austrian Times And CEN

This four-page BuzzFeed disclosure document is a fuller email thread from August 2014 between Craig Silverman and a redacted Austrian media contact, referred to elsewhere only as “the guy in Austria”. Silverman first approaches the contact while presenting himself through his Poynter/Regret the Error role, saying he tracks media accuracy and asking whether Austrian Times would “take real story and embellish it with false facts to make it more likely to spread”. The contact replies with a dismissive assessment of Austrian Times, describing it as effectively a one-man operation and saying that, from an editorial trustworthiness point of view, it was “like any blog out there. Zero.” Silverman then moves quickly from that general opinion to the specific Justin Bieber bear-attack story, saying he is getting ready to publish a story within the hour and claiming he has evidence that Austrian Times, CEN and EuroPics inserted fabricated material and may have taken images from Pravda in Russia. He asks whether the contact will let him quote the earlier “editorial trustworthiness” line on the record, but the contact refuses, saying he does not want to be associated with “that agency” while still being “happy to help”. The document is significant because it shows how one of Silverman’s earliest outside sources was being used to support a developing narrative about Austrian Times, CEN and fabricated material before the wider BuzzFeed investigation had fully taken shape. It also shows Silverman stating as early as August 2014 that CEN had inserted made-up details and taken images, even though the later history of the Bieber bear story became more complicated than that initial framing allowed. The redacted Austrian contact should not be named in the Source Library description. This appears to be a fuller version of the same “guy in Austria” material discussed elsewhere in the archive; if the shorter related item is already in the Source Library, it should be cross-referenced there, and the nearest related reference currently visible in the manuscript/source trail is BuzzFeed_000063, which is used in connection with Silverman’s Tow/Poynter signature and outside-source approach context.

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