Plagiarism was fired from BuzzFeed in July 2014 for plagiarism. BuzzFeed has been accused of plagiarizing original content from competitors from the online and offline press. In June 2012,
Gawker's
Adrian Chen observed that one of BuzzFeed's most popular writers—
Matt Stopera—frequently copied and pasted "chunks of text into lists without attribution." In March 2013,
The Atlantic Wire also reported several "listicles" had apparently been copied from
Reddit and other websites. In July 2014, BuzzFeed writer
Benny Johnson was accused of multiple instances of plagiarism. Two anonymous Twitter users chronicled Johnson attributing work that was not his own, but "directly lift[ed] from other reporters,
Wikipedia, and
Yahoo! Answers", all without credit. BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith initially defended Johnson, calling him a "deeply original writer". Days later, Smith acknowledged that Johnson had plagiarized the work of others 40 times and announced that Johnson had been fired, apologizing to BuzzFeed readers. "Plagiarism, much less copying unchecked facts from Wikipedia or other sources, is an act of disrespect to the reader", Smith said. "We are deeply embarrassed and sorry to have misled you." In 2016, claims surfaced of the YouTube channel BuzzFeedVideo stealing ideas and content from other creators. BuzzFeed has been the subject of multiple copyright infringement lawsuits, for both using content it had no rights to and encouraging its proliferation without attributing its sources: one for an individual photographer's photograph, and another for nine celebrity photographs from a single photography company. In June 2020,
BuzzFeed News senior reporter
Ryan Broderick was fired after it was revealed he had "plagiarized or misattributed information in at least 11 of his articles."
Reputation as a news site In October 2014, a
Pew Research Center survey found that in the United States, BuzzFeed was viewed as an unreliable source by the majority of people, regardless of political affiliation.
Adweek noted that most respondents had not heard of BuzzFeed, and many users do not consider BuzzFeed a news site. In a subsequent Pew report based on 2014 surveys, BuzzFeed was among the least trusted sources by
millennials. A 2016 study by the
Columbia Journalism Review found readers less likely to trust a story (originally published in
Mother Jones) that appeared to originate on BuzzFeed than the same article on
The New Yorker website. In a 2017 survey among US readers, BuzzFeed was voted the second least trustworthy source among American readers, with
Occupy Democrats being lower-ranked. In January 2017, BuzzFeed again faced widespread criticism from many journalists and media officials, along with then-President elect
Donald Trump, for publishing 35 pages of unverified memos in full, known as the
Steele dossier. In a highly publicized press conference following the publication of the memos, Trump referred to BuzzFeed as a "failing pile of garbage". Among the unverified claims in the memos was one that stated Trump's attorney
Michael Cohen had met in August 2016 with Russian officials in
Prague,
Czech Republic, a claim that Cohen has vehemently denied. On January 18, 2019,
Robert Mueller's office disputed a BuzzFeed report stating that Trump instructed
Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. A spokesman for Mueller's office characterized the BuzzFeed report as "not accurate".
Unpaid contributors Matthew Perpetua, BuzzFeed's director of quizzes, published a blog post in January 2019 after being laid off, revealing that many of the site's most popular quizzes were created by unpaid contributors. Perpetua identified one college student in
Michigan in particular as "the second-highest traffic driver worldwide." The student, Rachel McMahon, said that until she saw Perpetua's blog post, she never knew that her quizzes were so significant for BuzzFeed's traffic. The quizzes made an estimated $3.8 million for the media company. According to the
Detroit Free Press, she had never asked BuzzFeed about getting paid and the only material goods she received from them were four $30
Amazon gift certificates, a BuzzFeed sweatshirt and T-shirt and several water bottles.
Advertiser influence on editorial In April 2015, BuzzFeed drew scrutiny after
Gawker observed the publication had deleted two posts that criticized advertisers. One of the posts criticized
Dove soap (manufactured by
Unilever), while another criticized
Hasbro. Both companies advertise with BuzzFeed. Ben Smith apologized in a memo to staff for his actions: "I blew it. Twice in the past couple of months, I've asked editors—over their better judgment and without any respect to our standards or process—to delete recently published posts from the site. Both involved the same thing: my overreaction to questions we've been wrestling with about the place of personal opinion pieces on our site. I reacted impulsively when I saw the posts and I was wrong to do that. We've reinstated both with a brief note". Days later,
Arabelle Sicardi, one of the authors of the deleted posts, resigned. An internal review by the company found three additional posts deleted for being critical of products or advertisements (by
Microsoft,
Pepsi, and Unilever). In 2016, the
Advertising Standards Authority of the United Kingdom ruled that BuzzFeed broke the UK advertising rules for failing to make it clear that an article on "14 Laundry Fails We've All Experienced" that promoted
Dylon was an online
advertorial paid for by the brand. Although the ASA agreed with BuzzFeed's defense that links to the piece from its homepage and search results clearly labelled the article as "sponsored content", this failed to take into account that individuals might link to the story directly, ruling that the labeling "was not sufficient to make clear that the main content of the web page was an advertorial and that editorial content was therefore retained by the advertiser".
Hiring practices In February 2016,
Scaachi Koul, a Senior Writer for BuzzFeed Canada, tweeted a request for pitches stating that BuzzFeed was "...looking for mostly non-white non-men" followed by "If you are a white man upset that we are looking mostly for non-white non-men I don't care about you go write for Maclean's." When confronted, she followed with the tweet "White men are still permitted to pitch, I will read it, I will consider it. I'm just less interested because, ugh, men." In response to the tweets that were deemed
racist and
sexist, Koul began receiving a barrage of hate comments and threats of violence. Sarmishta Subramanian, a former colleague of Koul's, writing for ''
Maclean's'', condemned the reaction to the tweets, and stated that Koul's request for diversity was appropriate. Subramanian said that her provocative approach raised concerns of
tokenism that might hamper BuzzFeed's stated goals. In January 2019, BuzzFeed announced that it would cut its workforce by 15%. In July 2019 BuzzFeed announced that it would voluntarily recognize an employee union.
Ideology BuzzFeed states in its editorial guide that "we firmly believe that for a number of issues, including civil rights, women's rights, anti-racism, and LGBT equality, there are not two sides."
The Weeks correspondent Ryan Cooper and
American Enterprise Institute's senior fellow
Timothy P. Carney at the
Washington Examiner raised questions about whether BuzzFeed undermines its credibility by taking sides on political issues. In June 2015, BuzzFeed and websites like the
Huffington Post and
Mashable temporarily changed the theme of their social media avatars to rainbow colors to celebrate same-sex marriage being ruled constitutional in the United States. In June 2016, the left-leaning media watchdog
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting found that in 100 BuzzFeed stories about
Barack Obama, 65 were positive, 34 were neutral, and one was critical. The report called BuzzFeed's coverage of Obama "creepy" and "almost uniformly uncritical and often sycophantic." BuzzFeed has partnered with Obama on a
get-out-the-vote campaign. During the same month, BuzzFeed cancelled an advertising agreement with the
Republican National Committee over what BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti called "offensive remarks" made by
Donald Trump. Peretti said: "We certainly don't like to turn away revenue that funds all the important work we do across the company. However, in some cases we must make business exceptions: we don't run cigarette ads because they are hazardous to our health, and we won't accept Trump ads for the exact same reason." In January 2017, BuzzFeed released what became known as the "
Steele dossier", an uncorroborated private intelligence report that alleges several salacious accusations of Trump.
Margaret Sullivan at
The Washington Post wrote of the release: "It's a bad idea, and always has been, to publish unverified smears." David Graham at
The Atlantic called it "an abdication of the basic responsibility of journalism."
NBC's
Chuck Todd called the release of the document "
fake news". Ben Smith defended the decision to release the document from accusations that it was done out of partisanship, arguing that the dossier is of "obvious central public importance." ==Awards and recognition==