Back in March Tom Chivers, formerly of The Telegraph, poster a mildly mocking why-oh-why piece about “Why Monopoly Is The Worst Game In The World”. Some time later it was deleted. We now are told at the behest of the Editor-in-chief, Ben Smith. Originally it was claimed that the Tom Chivers deleted it himself, an odd thing for a journalist to do unless he is being sued. Tom didn’t delete his tweets about it:

It is unlikely Tom knew that Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, had signed a big sponsorship deal with Buzzfeed until perhaps Ben Smith, editor-in-chief, had a word.

At this point, in breach of all the fancy ethical guidelines that Buzzfeeders boast about…

From the @BuzzFeed "Editorial Standards And Ethics Guide" http://t.co/Z2AuByuh24… @TomChivers pic.twitter.com/8F60i9U8j4

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) April 10, 2015

… the post got deleted.

Critics were on the lookout for this kind of malfeasance after Gawker published an article on Thursday reporting that BuzzFeed deleted an article that attacked Dove’s latest advertising campaign.

On Friday morning MediaGuido was alerted by a reader that this had happened in relation to Monopoly. At 14:30 we reached out to Buzzfeed and Tom Chivers for an explanation. We got no reply. However, coincidentally perhaps, a former Telegraph colleague of Tom Chivers tweeted a reference to the issue at 15:40, at the same time as we published out first story.

The situation at this point was pretty much:

Where we are currently with the Buzzfeed/Monopoly scandal: Revealed ✔ Stonewalling / no comment from corporate HQ ✔ Cover-up exposed ✔

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) April 10, 2015

Media Guido predicted it would go like this:

Where the Buzzfeed/Monopoly scandal goes: scandal viral on social media ✔ MSM follow up a day or two later ✔ Corporate statement of regret ✔

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) April 10, 2015

It pretty much did exactly that, except far quicker…

Here’s the cover up:

Buzzfeed: Follow the Monopoly Money | Proof of @BuzzFeedUK / @TomChivers Article Cover Up: http://t.co/5BGkVlLCZD pic.twitter.com/fcNvEQZRHI

— Techno Guido (@TechnoGuido) April 10, 2015

As soon as New York media types started pushing the story, the statement of regret swiftly arrived:

Appreciate the criticism. We just reinstated two posts and I sent this note to staffers. pic.twitter.com/YodxHiQmt2

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) April 10, 2015

It turns out that Buzzfeed at the very least self-censors when it comes to lucrative advertisers. The Telegraph did the same with HSBC, about which a Buzzfeed report took a very moralistic tone, reporting that “…Telegraph colleagues had lost all faith in the newspaper’s management”. Turns out hipsters can be hypocrites too…

The article isn’t even that interesting anyway:

#BoardGamerGate @TomChivers post about how shite Monopoly is to play restored to @BuzzFeedUK pic.twitter.com/Q2YB0XMMjJ

— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) April 11, 2015

LOL.

On the 12 March Buzzfeed published an article by Tom Chivers called “Why Monopoly Is The Worst Game In The World, And What You Should Play Instead“. The next day the article had been deleted “at the request of the author.” A strange request for a journalist to make. Especially since Chivers was clearly proud of the story, tweeting:

What could have prompted such an extraordinary effort to remove the article from the web, with even Google’s cached version of the story now unavailable? Surely it has nothing to do with Buzzfeed’s “collaboration” with Hasbro, the makers of Monopoly, to advertise “MONOPOLY Here & Now“? At Guido’s count, Buzzfeed ran 21 articles promoting Hasbro’s competition to chose which city made their next version of Monopoly.

Buzzfeed went big on the Telegraph/HSBC scandal back in February, publishing “the critical HSBC story deleted from the Daily Telegraph website”. MediaGuido is awaiting comment…