Four members of Buzzfeed News’ political research team led by Andrew Kaczynski are joining the CNN politics team Tuesday, the Huffington Post reported.
Kaczynski, along with Kyle Blaine, Nate McDermott, and Christopher Massie, have scoured past and recent interviews of the presidential candidates for Buzzfeed. Kaczynski’s unit at Buzzfeed, the “K-File,” is responsible for surfacing many of Donald Trump’s past statements about the Iraq War and for revealing that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) plagiarized.
Kaczynski told the Huffington Post that he and his team decided that the opportunity to work at CNN was too good to pass up.
“To be at the biggest name in news for the last month of what has been the craziest election in modern history is just a great opportunity for me and everybody on our team,” he said. “When the opportunity was there, we made sure we took it.”
The K-File team’s decision to join CNN follows a feud between the network and Buzzfeed News. CNN CEO Jeff Zucker said in August that “Vice and BuzzFeed are legitimate news organizations.” His comments came in the same interview in which he defended hiring former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. In response, Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith knocked “CNN’s decision to turn its platform over to Jeff’s friend Donald Trump.”
Following the news on Monday that Kaczynski would head to CNN, Smith fired off a few tweets mocking CNN for dissing Buzzfeed and then poaching its political research team.
I guess this means that CNN has seen the value in doing the kind of tough reporting on Trump @BuzzFeedNews has been doing all cycle…
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) October 3, 2016
….we wish @buzzfeedandrew good luck.
— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) October 3, 2016
Actual CNN exec quote: “We’re not worried about BuzzFeed.”
?https://t.co/z2Qj6jZ3i2— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) October 3, 2016
In an interview with the Huffington Post, Andrew Morse, the executive vice president of editorial of CNN U.S., said that the decision to hire the K-File team was made to benefit CNN, not an attempt to hit back at Buzzfeed.
“We’re worried about ourselves,” Morse said. “We’re not worried about BuzzFeed.”
