By Brian Ries From Mashable

BuzzFeed, it seems, is on the World Health Organization’s blacklist.

The New York news organization found out the hard way on Wednesday when a WHO staffer mistakenly included a BuzzFeed reporter on an internal email.

The reporter, Tasneem Nashrulla, sent an email on Tuesday to WHO Communications Officer Laura Bellinger asking why she hadn’t been added to the health organization’s Ebola situation report distribution list.

The self-described “journalism lover, media friend” forwarded the reporter’s email to her colleagues, adding, “Fyi — I did not respond.”

In a second e-mail, the WHO staffer writes, “My understanding is that BuzzFeed is banned.”

An hour later, a second WHO communications staffer jumps in to the thread to tell the BuzzFeed reporter — still cc’d on the emails — why her media organization is blacklisted from covering Ebola.

Explaining that Bellinger is “new to the team,” WHO’s Tarik Jasarevic says the problem is not with BuzzFeed, per se, but its reporter, Jina Moore, “who on two occasions reported inaccurately.”

Moore is BuzzFeed’s Nairobi-based global women’s rights reporter who’s reported extensively on the virus’s deadly grip on the African continent.

“[Moore] has done some of the most incredible reporting on Ebola, the fact that WHO doesn’t like it is no reason not to talk to us,” BuzzFeed editor Miriam Elder said on Twitter, defending the reporter. “You’d think that getting the word out about Ebola would be a priority for the WHO press office,” she added.

BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith added on Twitter: “When you’re trying to secretly blacklist a great reporter, maybe don’t cc her colleague by accident.”

Reached over e-mail on Friday, Nov. 14, Christy Feig, Director of Communications at the WHO told Mashable that while BuzzFeed, the organization, is not banned, the WHO does temporarily blacklist media outlets that break the health organization’s embargoes.

“The only time an organization gets banned from receiving our information is if they break an embargo,” she says. “Then they are dropped from the list for three months. But BuzzFeed has never broken an embargo, so if they signed up for our distribution list (the reporter signs up then they are automatically in) they should be receiving our information.” She followed that up with a screenshot showing the names of seven BuzzFeed journalists who are on the WHO’s list — including Moore, who was added on August 6th. Feig did not respond to a question seeking clarification about her colleague’s statement that Moore was blacklisted.

BuzzFeed’s Smith, reached over email, simply stated: “I think we’ve said our piece.”

There have been more than 14,000 reported cases of Ebola, with 5,160 reported deaths, according to WHO’s latest situational report, issued Nov. 12.

IMAGE:World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Margaret Chan delivers a speech regarding the ebola virus which has caused the death of more than 2400 people so far in West Africa during a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, on September 12, 2014.IMAGE: FATIH EREL/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES

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