Fox News Denies Report: We Didn't Force Ensign To Admit Affair

Fox New is denying claims that Doug Hampton — whose wife Cynthia is the other woman in Senator John Ensign's sex scandal — sent the network a letter pleading for help exposing the affair five days before the Senator announced it in a press conference and that Ensign came forward with the affair because he knew Fox was working on the story.

The Las Vegas Sun reported Friday that Hampton sent Fox News' Megyn Kelly a two-page, single-spaced letter dated June 11 detailing the affair and asking for help in exposing the Senator. The Senator came forward with the affair on June 16 — in part, a spokesman told the Sun, because his office had learned that Hampton approached "a major television news channel."

"We learned of this fact before the news conference," the spokesman told the Sun.

Tom Lowell, senior producer of "America's Newsroom," hosted by Kelly and Bill Hemmer, says no one at Fox News ever received a printed letter, but that a booker on the show received an email from Hampton with the letter attached on June 15 — the day before the Senator's press conference.

"We never received any letter from Mr. Hampton," Lowell told the Huffington Post. "He might have sent it, but we never received it. He did reach out to us about 24 hours before the news conference, and he sent an e-mail to a booker on my staff."

Lowell said that a member of his editorial staff followed up with Hampton that day.

"We followed up with him, but he seemed evasive and not credible, thus we didn't pursue it," he said. "We certainly weren't going to rush to air with accusations against a sitting Senator without doing due diligence on the reputability of the claims.

"We always evaluate people when they call into the newsroom in terms of: does this sound like its solid? Does it sound like its actionable?" Lowell said. "There were some questions here, so we decided that we would make some inquiries but that it wasn't something we needed to move on immediately. And before we could nail everything down and confirm this story the Senator had already announced his press conference.

"We get hundreds and hundreds of items a week," he added. "They could be requests for help, please look into this, I think someone did this...we have to filter all that. Clearly this guy had a story to tell and we just didn't get to it before the Senator got to it."

Lowell also stated emphatically that no one at Fox News reached out to the Senator to alert him about the story.

"I know there are people asking if we alerted the senator," Lowell said. "Definitely no one on our editorial team called anyone in Senator Ensign's office prior to the announcement. We just hadn't gotten to that point of confirming the story yet. Somehow, somebody told the Senator something and I don't know how that happened. But I categorically deny that we ever reached out to the senator in any way shape or form prior to him making his announcement."

Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola could not be reached for comment Friday morning.

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Comments

[ConfuciusSay-]

So he thinks that Fox will voluntarily run a story about how a Republican senator is doing something scandalous.
Some guys are so dumb that they deserve to be cuckolded.

[bluerednot]

Well now that Fox is on the story you can look forward to them spinning the snot out of this - they are going to turn this guy Hampton into the villain - Ensign will be the poor victim.
Fox will throw everything into attempting to salvage Ensign - and just to really P.O. Democrats and Independents, there will be a couple of story lines that blame all of this on "liberals" and "opportunistic immoral non-Christians"

[jwatso7]

Maybe for once, Fox actually exercised some decent news judgment. After all, a Republican politician failing to practice the family values he preaches by cheating on his wife is nothing new.

[USCitizenShareHolder]

They were not exercising decent judgement. They were protecting a Republican (at all cost)

[Decipherer]

They have no decency.

[Daniel Torluemke]

I suspect Meghan Kelly and FOX were loking for ways to cover this up for Ensign. They sat on this story for a week.

[tel8034]

Methinks FAUX NOISE doth protest too much.

Isn't this similar to why Ensign is in so much trouble now? .................. Ensign "protested too much" over the sanctity of marriage, being against gay marriage and DOMA, called himself such a christian that the would not even be caught in a car with a woman he did not know, etc, etc, etc.

And VOILA .................... ANOTHER EXPOSED HYPOCRITICAL REPUBLICAN.

So while FAUX NOISE is "protesting too much" about their "innocence" in this debacle, WE KNOW THAT THEY ARE DOING WHAT THEY DO BEST ................... LIE !

[oldgeek1]

Even in this situation, I do not believe Fox

[sol2009]

There's and old saying which Senator Ensign ignored. It seems a dog was racing to beat a train and he almost made it across the tracks, but the train cut off his tail. After the train passed the dog went back for his tail. He didn't see a train coming from the opposite direction and it hit him. MORAL OF THE STORY. NEVER LOSE YOUR HEAD OVER A LITTLE PIECE OF TAIL.

[think4urself]

Senator Ensign is just trying to value as many families as he can. God bless him.

[CR46]

LMAO !!!

[Applecheeks]

Why did this guy go to fa ux? What was he thinking? That they were going to slime a sittting REPUB LICAN senator? Does he ever WATCH Faux? Megyn Kelly? She would dig the hole to bury him in.

[Gmoney1]

Ensign was paying the husband of his mistress with jobs and paying the mistress with promotions and salary - Fox is what it is - Dishonest, hypocritical and Deceitful - birds of a feather - come on no one believes that Fox has any integrity do they -

[vegasobserver]

And he was paying their son with a very lucrative job for a 19 year old working only for a few months... Very slimy if you ask me. Ensign is among the first to criticize Democrats for the slightest wrongdoing or slip-ups, yet he wants to be forgiven for this... Too bad he is not up for reelection in 2010 or he'd be toast.

[MadCroation]

Nope!

[kenp48]

Only more people than watching FOX, than CNN,MSNBC and CNBC combined. Recent poll, 40% of U.S. citizens say they are Conservative, only 20% identify themselves as liberal. More of us than there are of you.

[Daniel Torluemke]

Kemp48,

Fox News bein #1 in Cable News means little. At their very peak FOX has 3% of the overall TV audience. Bill O'reilly has 3 million viewers a night. Katie Couric on a bad night gets 9 million viewers. Think about it, 3 million viewers out of 300 million American's. Or better yet, 3 million out of 130million voters.

[ConfuciusSay-]

So, Jonas Bros can really sing, and Wrestling is for real, by this brilliant argument.

If there are really more of you, why didn't you win the last election?

[HGMercury]

I don't get it... wouldn't one want to get the credit? Why the disclaimer?

[Budokan]

When Fkkkx finally reported the story did they put a "D" after his name like they usually do?

[MESGAIN26]

no fox didn't force him to admit affair they tried to cover it up not only did Fox News know about the affair, but they also tipped off Ensign to the fact that Hampton had told them about it, Moreover, they knew that according to Hampton, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma -- Ensign's roomate in DC -- was aware of the philandering. Not surprisingly, however, Fox was the last of the three cable networks to report the news when it broke earlier this week. MSNBC first reported it during Hardball, and CNN was next on Wolf Blitzer's show. Fox didn't reveal the affair until about halfway through Brett Baier's program . Speaking of fox no credibilty, according to their own timeline, Fox was (a) the first cable channel to know about the affair and (b) the last cable channel to report on it. Meanwhile, Ensign's office says he came forward after learning that Hampton contacted a national television network, which we now know is Fox

[KataVideo]

agreed. 100%

[Oonagh]

I wonder how Ensign knew the cat was out of the bag..... a private newsflash from Fox?

[OneTop]

He's a republican, they and Fox are all on the same global email list.

[moxieme]

Guess the booker is and independent contractor, doesn't work for Faux, huh! If it walks like a duck, quacks, like a duck, its a duck. Strange you don't check out anything when ot comes to the POTUS. You certainly have your loyalists, not enough to make a difference. Barack Obama was sure elected. One thing is certain, you guys have not ethics. At least, now everyone knows you eat your own.