‘New Yorker’ Reveals How Fox Killed Stormy-Trump Story In 2016

NEW YORK CITY—The revelation that Donald Trump and his lawyer Michael Cohen made a $130,000 “hush money” payment to AVN Hall of Famer Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election in order to keep her quiet over a 2006 sexual encounter she had with Trump did not hit national headlines until January of last year, as AVN.com reported at the time.  Daniels later sued Trump to be released from the “hush” agreement, AVN.com reported exactly one year ago this Wednesday. But thanks to an extensive investigative report by New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, published in the March 11 issue of the magazine and appearing online today, an enterprising reporter for one major cable new network had uncovered the whole story in October of 2016, just a few weeks before the election.  But the network killed the story, and in January, shortly before Trump’s inauguration, demoted the reporter without explanation, according to Mayer’s investigation.  That network, Mayer reports, was (big surprise) Fox News, and the journalist, entertainment news reporter Diane Falzone, was told by a Fox executive, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.” “Rupert,” of course, is global media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose massive media empire includes the Fox News cable outlet. The executive who allegedly made the “Rupert wants Trump to win” statement to Falzone, Ken LaCorte, denied to Mayer that he made the statement to the reporter. “But one of Falzone’s colleagues confirms having heard her account at the time,” Mayer reported. Falzone, wrote Mayer, continued investigating the Daniels/Trump story anyway, and found that The National Enquirer had made a “catch and kill” deal with Daniels, according to Mayer’s New Yorker story, buying the rights to Daniels’ account in order to suppress it. But when Falzone pitched that angle to her editors, she again received no interest in running the story. Falzone sued Fox in May of 2017, after her demotion. According to Mayer, the suit was settled out of court, with Falzone now barred from discussing her work at Fox, as part of the settlement. Photo of Rupert Murdoch by Hudson Institute/Wikimedia Commons