Tom Phillips Makes CEN Draft “Punchier” As Alan White Frames Wider Media Critique

This 23 March 2015 email chain shows Tom Phillips sending Alan White an edited draft attachment titled CENDraft Tom Edit.docx while the BuzzFeed/CEN article was still being shaped internally. The document is significant because Phillips says he has tried to make the draft “punchier”, while White suggests adding broader “grandiose thoughts” about what the story says about modern media, including that major brands had “been reduced to reproducing this nonsense” and that “proper old school news editor” oversight might have caught it. The chain also shows Phillips contacting Miriam Elder and “Max” to ask whether they had ever heard of CEN, with Elder reportedly saying she had not, which Phillips presents as potentially useful because experienced correspondents in Eastern Europe not knowing CEN would be “almost as lol” as them knowing the agency. It should be read alongside the later BuzzFeed_010460 and BuzzFeed_010461 draft-review documents, because this appears to be an earlier branch in the same draft family, before Robert Colvile sent Heidi Blake the later version credited to Alan and Pat. The value of this item is that it shows the article being pushed from a set of disputed examples into a broader media-industry critique, while the draft itself was still being edited for tone, punch and narrative force.

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