BuzzFeed Builds “CEN Bollocks List” From Online Debunks And Plans Craig Silverman “Question Mark” Framing

This 1 December 2014 BuzzFeed email chain shows Alan White, Tom Phillips, Luke Lewis and Rossalyn Warren developing the early shape of what became the CEN “viral bullshit factory” investigation. The document is significant because it shows BuzzFeed moving from Tom Phillips’s request for “news stories from 2014 that the internet thought were true but actually weren’t true” into a CEN-focused search exercise built largely from online material, third-party debunks and stories that sounded suspicious. White says the search has proved “quite fertile ground already”, links to Craig Silverman’s Poynter piece on the Justin Bieber bear-attack story, asks Phillips to put specific CEN stories to Silverman, and lists examples including the sashimi tapeworm story, the Argentinian teacher story, the Chinese backpacker story and the KFC woman story. The chain is important because Phillips then describes the developing list as Alan’s “big CEN bollocks list”, which helps show how the investigation was being framed internally before the evidence had been properly tested. Luke Lewis also says BuzzFeed should make clear that it knows “how to verify viral news stories”, while at the same time proposing a simpler route: “We asked verification expert for his opinion on these huge viral news stories”, which he says would be a post he would want to read. Phillips similarly says there may be useful material in stories that fall short of being definitively debunked but are “enough to avoid publishing”. The document should be read alongside the earlier “few definitive fakes plus load of dodgy-sounding ones” thread, the “easy bit” documents, Silverman-budget material and later sample-selection records, because it helps show the investigation forming around online debunking, suspicion, pattern-building and external validation from Silverman rather than direct original reporting. It is also significant that Warren again floats the idea of BuzzFeed “plant[ing] a story” so CEN might pick it up and other sites would follow, while early examples such as the KFC story and Chinese backpacker story later became more complicated than the simple fake-news framing suggested here.

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