Legal Review Metadata Identifies Redacted Aurora Pictures File And Mark Frackt Custody

This disclosed BuzzFeed document is important because it records the existence of an internal conversation involving BuzzFeed CFO Mark Frackt and US commissioning editor John Gara during the early period when BuzzFeed was already discussing CEN and Michael Leidig internally. The importance is not in what can be read from the email itself, because the substance of the conversation was blacked out, but in the fact that BuzzFeed had to disclose that the conversation existed. In the book, this forms part of the evidence that there were 155 discussions between Frackt and Gara, beginning as early as January 2014, more than a year before BuzzFeed published “The King of Bullsh*t News” in April 2015. The redactions matter because they show the limits of the disclosure: BuzzFeed acknowledged the internal exchanges but withheld the actual dialogue, leaving unanswered why one of BuzzFeed’s most senior corporate executives was discussing CEN with the editor who had previously dealt with CEN material. Key supporting quote from the book: “This material included 155 discussions between Mr Frackt and a US-based commissioning editor called John Gara. They were, it seems, sensitive conversations that BuzzFeed did not want me to see.” Additional supporting quote: “Every single word of those 155 conversations had been blacked out, making it impossible to read any of the dialogue and, therefore, to know why Mr Frackt was talking about me or CEN at all.”

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