How a Trump ‘love child’ rumor roiled the media
AP acknowledges spiking and then reviving a story of how The National Enquirer paid off a Trump tipster.
The story of how The National Enquirer’s owner bought and spiked a story about an alleged Donald Trump "love child" is now roiling the media world, as The Associated Press acknowledged having decided not to publish it last August, before turning around and doing so on Thursday morning. Other outlets now admit they, too, had worked on the story before backing off.
Meanwhile, The New Yorker rushed to publish its own version right after the AP. And Radar, a gossip site that shares an owner with the Enquirer, attempted to head off both outlets by publishing a piece casting doubt on the claims of a “disaffected” former Trump employee.
The odd spectacle of news organizations both acknowledging their restraint in reporting a story, but then competing to put it out seemed to illustrate the media’s challenges in the Trump era, in which salacious allegations are often bandied about, while the efforts of the president and his allies to control the media narrative are often news in themselves.
"Publishing a story on a payment made to hush a rumor that may be accurate, partly accurate or not accurate at all is not an easy call, and we were aware that other news orgs struggled with it before not publishing,” said AP reporter Jeff Horwitz, who reported the story last summer. “We’re glad the story’s out.”
That story took an odd path from the kill file to the news wire, complete with tension-filled decisions along the way.
In August, AP Executive Editor Sally Buzbee informed colleagues on a conference call that their monthslong investigation into how the Enquirer-parent company American Media Inc. had bought and squashed the love-child story during the 2016 election would not be published.
The decision frustrated many in the newsroom who believed the AP’s story, buttressed by extensive sources and documentation, was rock solid and clearly newsworthy. Horwitz even left the AP newsroom for several days after the decision before being persuaded by management to return, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
Horwitz’s story, co-written with colleague Jake Pearson, was finally published around 1 a.m. Thursday. They reported that American Media Inc. paid $30,000 to Dino Sajudin, a former doorman at a Trump building, for the rights to a rumor that Trump had fathered a child decades back with a former employee. Sajudin could be forced to pay $1 million if he broke the agreement, they reported.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/12/trump-love-child-rumor-media-519213
