Owing perhaps to its outdated reputation as a traffic-hungry upstart that hawked cat listicles for clicks, BuzzFeed has a deep and abiding relationship with domestic felines.
Although the Web giant now has a growing commitment to news, staffers remain fond of BuzzFeed’s legacy as a hub for all things cat. Conference rooms at BuzzFeed are named after famous Internet cats, and the company’s editor in chief has affirmed his commitment to providing “great, cat-led entertainment.”
But on Friday, BuzzFeed UK marked what must surely be a milestone in its repertoire of cat content when it deployed a tabby to go undercover for an investigative news story. Staffers registered Ned, a three-year-old feline belonging to BuzzFeed UK staffer Hayley Campbell, as a supporter of Britain’s Labour party, entitling him to a vote in the upcoming election.
The story (complete with pictures of Ned posed in front of a computer, natch), reveals how easy it is to game the Labour leadership election in the UK. This comes after the site showed that voters who post photos of their ballots online could fall prey to unscrupulous hucksters.
The story details exactly how BuzzFeed UK got a ballot for its feline:
All that was required was his home address, date of birth – we calculated Ned’s human age to be 29 using this cat age calculator – and contact details. We set up a Hotmail address for this purpose, soupycampbell1986@hotmail.com, because we reckoned Ned would be the sort of cat that would still use Hotmail.
Journalism history is redolent with stories of undercover reporters exposing flaws in society. In the 1970s, the Chicago Sun-Times purchased a tavern, fittingly named The Mirage, and outfitted it with hidden cameras to expose dirty dealings with public officials. Muckraking crusader Nellie Bly, of course, checked herself into an asylum to shed light on mistreatment of the patients there. And ABC reporters took jobs at Food Lion to uncover sanitation problems at the supermarket chain. But one wagers this is the first time a cat has ever been used for investigative purposes.
