In the weeks since Donald Trump was accused of paying off a porn star to cover up his affair, Fox News has labored to keep the story from getting any traction. The Washington Post reports that between March 5 and March 9, the network only mentioned Stormy Daniels’s name nine times in their primetime shows. That compared with 144 mentions on MSNBC and 141 mentions on CNN. And last week Fox News didn’t mention her once during primetime.

This neglect did not go unnoticed by Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti. He told Ari Melber on MSNBC that “I haven’t received a single interview request, not one, from Fox News.” That’s after Avenatti appeared repeatedly on many other news programs and frequently broke new information. So his absence on Fox was undoubtedly deliberate.

As a result of Avenatti’s complaints, it can now be reported that Fox News was apparently shamed into reaching out to him with a request for an interview. Avenatti accepted the offer and will appear Tuesday night. But before anyone gets the idea that Fox is being fair and balanced, note that the offer is for a segment on “Fox News @ Night with Shannon Bream,” a program that airs from 11:00 PM to midnight. So Fox is burying the interview on a late night show that frequently comes in third after MSNBC’s Brian Williams and CNN’s Don Lemon.

For a topic this important, it is journalistic malpractice to tuck it away in the wee hours. It would ordinarily be the sort of program that would bring Fox’s lips to watering. It has the tabloid salaciousness of sordid sex with an X-rated beauty queen, the intrigue of a political cover up, and the lawlessness of election tampering. If President Obama had paid off an erotica celeb to hide his tawdry promiscuity, Fox News would have turned it into twelve part mini series.

One has to wonder where the allegedly “news” focused programs on Fox are during all of this. Bret Baier and Shepard Smith have apparently declined to seek an interview with Avenatti. And even the primetime shills Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, who you would think would love to grill this “floozy’s” rep, are laying low. Could that really be the result of independent booking decisions on the part of all of these Fox anchors? Not likely. More plausible is that an edict has been declared from on high in Fox’s executive suites that Stormy and her advocates are verboten during any time period when people are actually watching?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

This is certainly additional evidence that Fox News isn’t really a news network. They are not making editorial decisions based on news worthiness or even ratings. They are deep-sixing a huge story that has shown persistence in the news cycle for weeks. They are obviously trying to mute the criticism that they have avoided this story by airing the interview but burying near midnight with an anchor most people have never heard of. And all of this is being done to shield Donald Trump from the embarrassment that is his actual life. But unfortunately for Fox News – and thanks to the sex angle – this story is getting out no matter how badly Fox wants to crush it. Only their own regular viewers will be left ignorant, as usual.