BuzzFeed Threatens to Fire Employees for Leaking Information
BuzzFeed chief of staff Ashley McCollum has published a memo—apparently prompted by a pair of leaks to the Wall Street Journal—indicating that the rapidly growing media company will terminate employees for leaking information to the press:
Anonymously tipping a reporter to something a colleague says in a meeting isn’t a violation of business or journalistic ethics. It’s an issue of personal ethics. It makes it harder for us to trust one another. That said, the one thing that’s worse for culture than leaks is obsessing about the leakers, so we won’t be launching a plumbing operation to find the holes. But breaching confidences is something we take seriously, and the sort of thing you can get fired for.
The memo is titled, quite appropriately, “Transparency And Trust.”