San Diego-based One America News was fairly accurate this week in one sentence posted on its website.
It said that an allegation of an affair between Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen, “if confirmed, would shatter the story surrounding Stormy Daniels and Donald Trump that Biden and the mainstream media have been hanging onto for years.”
But the source material OAN used for a story — a couple of tweets it amplified Wednesday on its website — was never confirmed.
And a journalism ethics expert doubts that OAN’s Brooke Mallory should have posted that story Wednesday quoting an X user from Newport Beach named Tony Seruga.
In series of tweets, Seruga claimed he’d been told that Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Cohen, and the porn star had been having an affair since 2006.
The third-hand source was Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ disgraced attorney now serving time in federal prison.
“The whole hush money scheme was cooked up by Michael Cohen to extort the Trump Organization before the 2016 election,” said Seruga, a MAGA pundit. “Avenatti seemed pleased at how deviant Michael Cohen was.”
Times of San Diego reached out to prison officials at Terminal Island, a low-security lockup in San Pedro, asking for comment by Avenatti. He replied four days later:
Cohen also did.
A key player in next month’s hush-money trial in New York City, the former Trump fixer told me via LinkedIn: “If you believe this, I have 2 bridges to sell you. … The attempts by Donald and/or his followers to harass and intimidate me will not work. What it demonstrates is their deep concern about this trial and me and Stormy as a witnesses.”
Earlier, Cohen mocked stories by OAN and fellow far-right news outlets on the alleged affair.
On X, formerly Twitter, Cohen said: “I hope this is Donald’s defense at trial. You forget how many people were involved in protecting Donald at this time. Good try MAGAT!”
On Thursday, Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, noted the OAN story and tweeted: “This is the funniest and most desperate shit I’ve heard yet … and that’s saying A LOT! I really hope this is brought up in court!”
In response to another tweet, Cohen said Trump’s affairs with Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal occurred before Cohen was working at the Trump Organization — which he supposedly was working to extort.
“I guess that was me as well with Billy Bush talking about grabbing women by the pussy or sexually assaulting E. Jean in a department store,” Cohen said.
I wrote to Mallory, the OAN digital content writer, asking her whether she was working to confirm the alleged affair.
Mallory didn’t answer that question but noted the attribution she used in her report.
“As a fellow writer, I’m surprised you don’t understand that when someone says ‘Whistleblower claims…,’ especially in the title, I’m not saying it is a fact, I’m just saying that a man is claiming this.”
Mallory later wrote me: “Sorry for ruffling your feathers. Many felt the same way when the Russian collusion fake conspiracy was spouted by a wide range of other media outlets before it was later proven to be false.”
It’s true that news media outlets often quote other outlets. But the original report is generally vetted by teams of editors, reporters and producers.
The OAN story on the Daniels-Cohen affair raised the eyebrows of at least one industry ethicist.
San Diego-based Lynn Walsh, assistant director of Trusting News and a past national president of the Society of Professional Journalists, told me the story didn’t appear to include any actual reporting.
“More, it’s a lot of he said/she said pulled from X and reposted,” said Walsh, a former SPJ ethics committee chair. “That is not a reporting process I consider to be journalistically sound.”
Walsh said simply resharing what people post on social media is “not responsible or ethical journalism and is unhealthy for the online information space.”
Responsible journalists do their own fact-checking and verifying before publishing stories based on a post, she said.
“In addition,” Walsh said via email, “it does not appear there were any attempts to ask the individuals involved about these allegations — that is also a basic responsibility journalists have and should do before publishing allegations against someone.”
I wrote to Seruga, whose claims were reposted by Chuck Callesto — and viewed 3.4 million times. He has yet to respond.
His X bio says he works for GreenlawCapital.com and politicalmarketingconsultants.com.
Seruga says his clients include the U.S., British, Israeli and Saudi Arabia governments as well as Microsoft, Dell Computers, GE, IBM, General Motors Corporation and the “Dutch East India Company.”
But the Dutch East India Company was dissolved in 1799.
Mallory, author of the OAN story, ended her Cohen-Daniels report with: “This is a developing story. Check back for updates.”
No updates were made.