In the most predictable plot twist since yesterday, former Fox News editor Ken LaCorte demolished a key portion of a supposedly groundbreaking expose by Jane Mayer at the New Yorker.
As Mayer told it, LaCorte passed on a story about President Trump’s alleged affair with Stormy Daniels by reporter Diana Falzone because the editor said “Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win.” The insinuation was egregious enough that DNC Chairman Tom Perez cited Mayer’s reporting as the reason why he would forgo partnering with the Fox News Channel for the 2020 debate season.
But surprise, surprise: Mayer apparently didn’t tell the whole story.
LaCorte, who has since left the network and teamed up with both a former Fox News colleague and a former NPR editor to create a digital news startup aimed at “restoring faith in media,” refuted key portions of the story in a column for Mediate. Where Mayer claimed that Falzone obtained “proof” of the Stormy Daniels affair, LaCorte says that Falzone’s story actually included only two anonymous sources and one blog owner. And that wasn’t enough, in his estimation, to corroborate a tale that Stormy Daniels herself continued to publicly deny.
Mayer also alleged that Falzone “amasses e-mails between Daniels’s attorney and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, detailing a proposed cash settlement, accompanied by a nondisclosure agreement.” Falzone may have had that as proof, but LaCorte says that the story was devoid of any mention of the hush-money deal.
“The story wasn’t close to being publishable, and my decision to hold it was a no-brainer,” he said. “I didn’t do it to help Trump and never said nor implied otherwise. Still, our editors told Falzone to keep digging until, a week before the election, Stormy and her friends went radio silent.”
As LaCorte notes, Fox wasn’t the only outlet to have such an experience with the Daniels story. Her camp was selling to the highest bidder — that is, effectively using the media, shopping the tale around town until she had locked down the Cohen deal. Mayer’s narrative relies on the notion that Fox News was unique in dumping the shady scoop, when in fact the opposite was true.
As the Mayer story stands, it’s essentially a he says/she says between LaCorte and Falzone. But let’s take a look at the motives here.
LaCorte seems to have left Fox News of his own volition. He hardly seems to have motive to cover for the since-ousted Roger Ailes. If higher-ups did in fact strong-arm him into spiking the story, LaCorte doesn’t seem to have any reason to lie about it now.
Furthermore, LaCorte’s been telling the same story for over a year now. Oliver Darcy at CNN reported in January 2018 that LaCorte passed on the Stormy tale prior to the election. LaCorte explained to Mediate more than a year ago the exact same problems with Falzone’s specific lack of corroboration. Falzone declined to comment to Mediate.
Which brings us to her story. In January 2017, after LaCorte left the company, Fox took Falzone off the air. She later sued them for gender and disability discrimination, settling in March of last year. Falzone alleged that Fox effectively demoted her because she publicly shared her endometriosis diagnosis in an op-ed. But Mayer doesn’t include any of this. Instead she simply wrote, “In January, 2017, Fox demoted Falzone without explanation. That May, she sued the network. Her attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, declined to comment but acknowledged that a settlement has been reached; it includes a nondisclosure agreement that bars Falzone from talking about her work at Fox.” The settlement’s been public knowledge since last year.
Which brings us to Mayer and into the thick of this whole mess.
LaCorte says that he “spoke at length with [Mayer] over the months” following December of last year, but that she never asked about the Daniels story. Then a fact checker called LaCorte about the claim that he said Fox was passing on the story because “Rupert wants Donald” to win, a statement he denied. He then emailed Mayer, who said that she would call him to follow up. Except that she never did, nor did any other reporter since the publication of Mayer’s story.
“I’m an easy guy to find, especially since I’m in the process of launching a startup news site intent on bringing fairness back to journalism,” wrote LaCorte. “This whole episode is an example of why the media has a credibility crisis. The ultimate irony is that in its zeal to hang Fox News for journalistic malfeasance, the media tossed journalistic standards in the trash can and gave readers the 100 percent wrong impression of Fox and the Stormy Daniels story.”
LaCorte doesn’t address the other portions of the article which don’t involve him, but he certainly does refute a clear thesis that attempted to accuse Fox of blurring the lines between their news and editorial sides. Barring some second major exculpatory update from Mayer, the only newsworthy thing about LaCorte’s conduct is actually having standards that exclude salacious but poorly corroborated and anonymously sourced stories.
I guess that would be easy to miss for Mayer, who found Deborah Ramirez to be a credible witness when no one else did.
