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The editor of BuzzFeed, the website that carries headlines ranging from "12 Reasons Everything Is Better When It Rains" to "EU Ministers To Hold Emergency Talks On Migrant Crisis," has acknowledged the deletion of more than 1,000 posts – three of them following complaints from advertisers – since he was hired in January 2012.

Editor in chief Ben Smith's memo to staff Saturday, obtained by the website Gawker, comes after his site was criticized for the recent deletion of two posts – one critical of the board game Monopoly and the other critical of the ad campaign launched by soap brand Dove. Their parent companies, Hasbro and Unilever, respectively, are BuzzFeed advertisers. Gawker first reported both those deletions.

Smith has maintained both those instances were for editorial reasons, but the deletions, and the scrutiny directed at the website, prompted an internal review last week of the practice at BuzzFeed.

The review, which was headed by Annie-Rose Strasser, BuzzFeed News deputy managing editor, found 1,112 posts deleted posts since January 2012. Here's the breakdown, according to Smith's memo: editorial decisions, 100; advertiser complaints, 3; copyright issues, 65; technical error, 263; duplicated already published work, 122; community user deletions, 140; on-edit staff deletions and unidentified bylines, 377.

Of the three posts deleted after complaints from advertisers, one, Smith said, was by Mark Duffy, a blogger and ad critic who wrote for the site under the byline "copyranter." In 2013, he accused an ad for Axe deodorant of advocating "worldwide mass rape." The ad agency complained, via BuzzFeed's chief revenue officer, that the "tone of his item was over the top."

"I agreed that this was way outside even our very loose standards of the time," Smith wrote in his memo to staff.

A second post was deleted after complaints from BuzzFeed's chief revenue officer. This one was by Tanner Ringerud, a former member of BuzzFeed's Creative department, who switched to editorial in 2013. His post that March mocked Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In his previous BuzzFeed job, Ringerud had worked on a Microsoft ad campaign. After the complaint, Smith said, "We agreed that it was inappropriate for Tanner to write about brands whose ad campaigns he'd worked on."

The third complaint, this one in January 2014, came from the head of BuzzFeed's creative division that writer Samir Mezrahi had taken a gif from a Pepsi ad created by BuzzFeed's creative team and turned it into a Vine without credit. Smith said he asked Mezrahi not to use advertising created by BuzzFeed's business side for editorial purposes.

"Four days later, he published a post titled 'These Brands Are Going To Bombard Your Twitter Feed On Super Bowl Sunday,' which was a mix of criticism and praise for a long list of brands on Twitter," Smith wrote in the memo. "I again heard a complaint from our business side about Pepsi, which was the first item in the list, and whose Twitter feed they were making content for during the Super Bowl."

Smith added that BuzzFeed decided that an editor writing about an ad produced by the site's creative team was "inappropriate." That post was deleted.

You can also read/listen to David's Folkenflik – and NPR's — past reporting on BuzzFeed here:

OMG, BuzzFeed Is Investing In Serious News Coverage! Is It FTW?

9 Powerful Moments In The Day Of A Viral Web Editor At BuzzFeed

buzzfeed

The European Union is holding an emergency meeting Monday about the deadly capsizing of a boat crowded with would-be migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. With 28 survivors reported and 24 bodies recovered, only a fraction of the hundreds of people who were reportedly on board are accounted for.

The boat was about 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa when it capsized this weekend; it was roughly 60 miles from Libya. Estimates of the number of people who were on the 65-foot craft range from 700 to 950. The boat reportedly capsized after many of its passengers rushed to the same side.

From Rome, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports:

"One survivor says there were 950 people on board, many locked in the hold by the human traffickers before departure. But Italian authorities say they cannot confirm the numbers on board.

"Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has long been seeking more help and resources from Italy's European partners, has called for an emergency meeting of EU government leaders."

Today's EU meeting in Luxembourg comes as some 1,500 migrants are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean so far this year; more than 10,000 have been rescued. The foreign ministers' discussions are sure to center on who will bear responsibility for patrolling immigration routes and helping those in danger. The EU has run one such program since last fall, when Italy discontinued its larger operation.

This weekend's disaster stands to eclipse a similar event late in 2013, when 500 migrants had crammed onto a boat that caught fire and sank near Sicily. Officials estimated that up to 300 people died.

"We've had one and a half years now to talk about that and discuss that – and plan for that," says the UN High Commission for Human Rights' Laurens Jolles. "And only now we hear the EU and governments are all starting to discuss that and say, 'It's unacceptable, we have to do something.'"

Many of the smuggling boats have launched from Libya, fueled by a combination of upheaval and a lack of border controls. The passengers are often from a range of North African countries.

"The disaster comes only a week after 400 others were reported dead in a similar capsize near Lampedusa," as Scott wrote for The Two-Way Sunday.

For a sign of the state of things in Libya, consider that a newspaper headline on Sunday touted the pending return of roadway traffic lights in Benghazi.

"We have what is possibly becoming a failed state at our doorstep. We have criminal gangs having a heyday organizing these trips in rickety boats," Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat tells the BBC. "We need to get the Libyan factions together to form some sort of government of almost national unity."

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Martin O'Malley, former governor of Maryland, says he'll decide by late May if he's running for president. Running would put him — even he seems to acknowledge — in an uphill battle against Hillary Clinton, currently the only Democrat who's declared.

O'Malley is positioning himself to Clinton's left, and even President Obama's left.

It's All Politics

O'Malley, Possible Clinton Rival, Says A President Can't Let Polls Lead

He's for a much higher minimum wage, and against a major trade deal — the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In an interview with NPR's Steve Inskeep, O'Malley also said he wants to increase Social Security benefits, even though some people would pay more taxes.

Surveys put O'Malley far behind Clinton. But, he's hoping his travels across the country can change that. Last month, he addressed a crowd in Iowa while standing on a chair. Last week, he gave a speech at Harvard. And this week, he's in the early primary state of South Carolina.

"I've been an executive and a progressive executive with a record of accomplishments," the former Baltimore mayor said of the difference between him and Clinton. "I think contrasts will become apparent."

(A full transcript of the discussion is available here.)

Interview Highlights

On Republican and Democrats' competing economic theories

I think what's going on right now, Steve, is you have a competition between two theories of how our economy actually works and how we generate economic growth that lifts us all. The Republican Party is doubling down on this trickle-down theory that says thou shalt concentrate wealth at the very top of our society. Thou shalt remove regulation from wherever you find it, even on Wall Street. And thou shalt keep wages low for American workers so that we can be more competitive. We have a different theory. Our theory as Democrats and as the longer arc of our story as Americans is that we believe that a stronger middle class is actually the cause of economic growth. What ails our economy right now is 12 years of stagnant or declining wages, and we need to fix this.

On Republican candidates' focus on economic opportunity

I mean, look, talk is cheap. And so there are two ways to go forward from here, and history shows this. One path is a sensible rebalancing that calls us back to our tried and true success story as the land of opportunity. The other is pitchforks.

There's, history affords no other paths. We're either going to sensibly rebalance and do the things that allow our middle class to grow, that expands opportunities and allows workers to earn more when they're working harder. Or, we're going to go down a very, very bad path.

On whether large corporations are able to deal with regulation better than small businesses

Oh, certainly. I mean, our tax code's been turned into Swiss cheese. And certainly the concentrated wealth and accumulated power and the systematic deregulation of Wall Street has led to this situation where the economy isn't working for most of us. All of that is true. But it is not true that regulation holds poor people down or regulation keeps middle class from advancing. That's kind of patently bull——.

On the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal

Yeah, I do oppose it. What's wrong with it is first and foremost that we're not allowed to read it before our representatives vote on it. What's wrong with it is that right now what we should be doing are things that make our economy stronger here at home. And it's my concern that the Trans-Pacific Partnership, this deal is a race to the bottom, a chasing of lower wages abroad, and I believe that that does nothing to help us build a stronger economy here at home.

Hillary Clinton made a surprising move this week. It wasn't running for president — she'd already set the stage for that — but embracing the idea of a constitutional amendment to restrict or eliminate big money in politics.

The notion of amending the Constitution this way has been discussed, literally for decades. But Clinton is joining a new, if small, chorus of prominent politicians who are talking it up.

"We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccounted money out of it, once and for all, even if that takes a constitutional amendment," she said to a gathering at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa.

Campaign finance reform is one of four pillars, "four big fights," of her campaign, she said, along with help for families and communities; a stronger, more balanced economy; and a strong national defense.

Activist groups have toiled for such an amendment since 2010, when the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision let corporate and union money directly into partisan politics.

Clinton spoke a few days after Republican Lindsey Graham's most recent comments on a possible amendment.

"The next president of the United States needs to get a commission of really smart people and find a way to create a constitutional amendment to limit the role of superPACs," said Graham, a senator from South Carolina who is weighing a presidential run. He was appearing on WMUR-TV in Manchester, N.H.

SuperPACs were created after Citizens United and a related appellate ruling, as political committees that raise unrestricted contributions from wealthy donors, corporations and unions. SuperPAC donors are publicly disclosed. Along with 501(c)(4) "social welfare" organizations, which have no disclosure as well as no contribution limits, superPACs are fueling the boom in bare-knuckle, lavishly financed campaigning by noncandidate, nonparty groups.

President Obama said yes to amending the Constitution in 2012, in a Q&A session on Reddit, and again last month, in an interview on the website Vox. "I would love to see some constitutional process that would allow us to actually regulate campaign spending, the way we used to, and maybe even improve it," he told Vox.

Campaign spending has been constitutionally protected since a 1976 Supreme Court decision known as Buckley v. Valeo. The justices said Congress could not regulate political spending, because it was tantamount to free speech. All subsequent attempts to control political money have had to work around the Buckley distinction between contributions and spending.

Former Democratic presidential candidate and New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley said as early as the 1990s that a constitutional amendment was needed to overturn Buckley. In 2012, he told NPR's Talk Of The Nation, "You need a constitutional amendment that says federal, state and local governments may limit the amount of money in a campaign."

But back to Clinton. At People for the American Way, one of the groups mobilizing for an amendment, Executive Vice President Marge Baker said Clinton's statement can help the effort.

"When the leading candidate for president says she's going to make reducing the influence of money in politics one of the four pillars in her campaign, you know that that's going to be a major issue in 2016," Baker said. "So this is a very, very big deal."

Clinton drew a charge of hypocrisy from Republican Gov. Chris Christie, of New Jersey. Not a declared presidential candidate, he was stumping in New Hampshire.

"She intends to raise $2.5 billion for her campaign. But she wants to then get the corrupting money out of politics," he said to laughter at a town hall meeting. "It's classic, right? It's classic politician-speak."

In Congress this year, lawmakers have introduced nine resolutions proposing constitutional amendments — typically proposing to restrict political spending, or bar corporate spending in politics, or overturn the Supreme Court's 129-year-old precedent of giving corporations the constitutional standing of people.

Republican leaders on Capitol Hill simply say nobody should mess with the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky made the point on the Senate floor last fall.

"If the Democrats who run Washington are so determined to force the Senate into debate over repealing the free speech protections of the First Amendment, then fine, let's have a full and proper debate," he said.

Democrats wanted a Senate vote on a constitutional amendment, and they got it. The proposal passed, 54 to 42 — 13 short of the two-thirds majority required for a proposed amendment. Ratification also requires a two-thirds vote in the House, and approval from 38 states.

Republican lawyer Trevor Potter has long worked for tougher campaign finance laws. He was the lawyer for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., when the Senate passed the McCain-Feingold bill in 2001. It's the last major campaign finance law to emerge from Congress. But now, Potter says a constitutional amendment poses problems that only start with ratification.

Potter said, "Beyond that is the issue of what is it that the amendment would say, and how would it be effective?"

These are questions of language that might go too far, or not far enough, or lie open to reinterpretation by future Supreme Courts.

So far, the answers don't satisfy all of big money's critics.