A British news company that offers almost exclusively in strange, sensational stories with viral possible has sued BuzzFeed for defamation, in step with the Hollywood Reporter. The $11 million lawsuit was once brought against the digital media giant by way of crucial European news (CEN), which was once the subject of a recent BuzzFeed article titled “The King of Bullsh*t news.”

in the submit, BuzzFeed divulged that CEN was the source of questionable tales that discovered their technique to information outlets just like the the big apple daily information and the day by day mirror—suppose headlines like “instructor suspended after intercourse session with teen scholar finally ends up on hardcore porn website online” and “Justin Bieber ringtone saves Russian fisherman from endure assault”—and that a just right chunk of CEN’s clickbait was pretend news. (BuzzFeed did also notice that various CEN’s tamer posts have been reliable.)

From the BuzzFeed article:

The agency’s trade model, like that of many different information companies, is to sell a regular move of news and images to other media companies, which submit them below the bylines of their own newshounds. In CEN’s case, these embrace a string of reports from slightly remote components of China, India, Russia, and other non-Western international locations. they tend to depict the inhabitants of these countries as barbaric, sex-crazed, or just plain bizarre. And regularly they are inaccurate or downright false.

… CEN’s “weird information” stories and images appeal to information corporations precisely as a result of they fall into the class of “too excellent to test”. additionally they appeal because they are perfectly tailored to the present media ecosystem, wherein the holy grail is to have content material go viral on facebook and other social media platforms, delivering a surge of traffic.

previous to newsletter, BuzzFeed analyzed forty one CEN posts that caught out as outlandish, of which 32 had been deemed suspect (albeit to varying levels). In a letter to BuzzFeed on the time, CEN declined to reveal its reporting strategies—citing BuzzFeed as a competitor—and denied the allegations made with the aid of the e-newsletter.

CEN and British journalist Michael Leidig filed the lawsuit together and stated BuzzFeed had compromised CEN’s business, resulting in declining ad income and the loss of CEN shoppers—including “a potential excessive-six-determine investment.” The swimsuit also accused BuzzFeed of incorrectly poking holes in more than one articles that could be backed up with the aid of actual costs and reporting; CEN alleged that BuzzFeed had no longer carried out a comprehensive reality take a look at of the content material in query.

fast firm has reached out to BuzzFeed for comment on the lawsuit.

[by means of Hollywood Reporter]