Ken LaCorte

Ken LaCorte (born February 5, 1965) is an American media executive, journalist, businessman, and YouTuber. He was an executive at Fox News for over eighteen years, joining in 1999 as Western Region bureau chief before rising to head of news editorial and vice president/senior executive producer of FoxNews.com (2006–2016), where he oversaw all editorial content and digital operations. He was born in Alhambra, California, on February 5, 1965.

He attended Claremont McKenna College and earned a bachelor's degree in government in 1987. In 1997, he challenged California law by publishing the state's Megan's Law list.

Fox News LaCorte worked in senior management for Fox News Channel for nearly two decades. where he oversaw editorial content of the website. During his tenure at Fox News Digital, the site underperformed against CNN even while Fox News Channel dominated the cable news ratings.

LaCorte was one of network chief Roger Ailes's most trusted employees. He was part of Ailes's "Black Room," a secret unit used to conduct surveillance on Fox News employees and perceived rivals of the network. Websites were set up to attack reporters, and private investigators were dispatched to follow journalists and prepare dossiers that would be leaked to blogs such as "Cable Game." LaCorte engaged in negative PR campaigns to promote Ailes's personal grievances against journalists and Fox News critics.

Alleged Fox News Trump-Daniels cover-up In March 2019, Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker that Fox News reporter Diana Falzone had the story of the Stormy Daniels–Donald Trump scandal before the 2016 election, but that LaCorte told her, "Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert [Murdoch] wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go," and the story was killed. Nik Richie, who claimed to be one of the sources for the Falzone story, called LaCorte's account "complete bullshit," adding "Fox News was culpable. I voted for Trump, and I like Fox, but they did their own 'catch and kill' on the story to protect him."

In 2022, LaCorte defended his decision, saying that Daniels and Falzone were not interested in publishing the scandal but were using the media to extort Trump. According to him, Daniels refused to go on record and, after Trump paid her, avoided media outlets. He said the criticism directed at him and Fox was unjustified and pointed to other outlets that did not cover the story. He added that Trump was innocent and that Daniels should be in prison.

LaCorte News At the end of 2016, LaCorte was pushed out of Fox News during the post-Ailes "corporate purge". LaCorte also recruited former NPR editorial director and New York Times editor Michael Oreskes to join him at LaCorte News with the stated goal of "restoring faith in media." John Moody left Fox after posting a racially inflammatory column, and Michael Oreskes was ousted from an executive position at NPR due to alleged sexual harassment.

In November 2019, a New York Times report alleged that LaCorte used to push inflammatory content on the websites Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News, which he controlled. LaCorte's ownership of the sites was not publicly known until the NYT investigation, conducted jointly with the Virginia security firm Nisos. LaCorte defended the operation, saying he ran the partisan sites to drive traffic and raise revenue for his centrist outlet LaCorte News, stating, "I wanted to try to find middle ground." He acknowledged hiring Macedonian writers from Veles, a town described by reporters as "home to a collection of writers who churned out disinformation during the 2016 presidential election in the United States."

In late November 2019, the Facebook pages for Conservative Edition News and Liberal Edition News were shut down for terms of service violations that included manipulation of site privileges and engagement with Macedonian "troll farms". The shutdown effectively ended LaCorte News.

Hunter Biden laptop story In October 2020, LaCorte was among the first to publish material from the Hunter Biden laptop. According to The Daily Beast, repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac contacted LaCorte through Fox News connections, despite Mac Isaac's stated preference that law enforcement investigate the contents of the laptop. On October 15, 2020, LaCorte released 29 PDFs he said contained emails from Hunter Biden's iCloud account. Metadata from the archive showed the files containing copies of these emails but not the emails themselves were created the evening of October 14, after the story was already published by New York Post.

Elephants in Rooms Since 2023, LaCorte has hosted the YouTube channel, Elephants in Rooms, which covers politics, history, popular culture, and topics he describes as underreported, including conspiracy theories, demography, discrimination, and alleged cover-ups. As of August 2026, the channel had over 890,000 subscribers and 86.8 million total views.

LaCorte is a regular participant of Burning Man, an annual week-long desert event in Northwestern Nevada; he is set to participate in it for the eleventh time in 2026.

In February 1976, LaCorte's sister Cathy LaCorte and her boyfriend Bob Morton were murdered while hiking near Arcadia. The killer, Richard Johnson, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. The experience led LaCorte's family to become active in California's victims' rights movement, advocating for parole reform and contributing to the passage of Proposition 8 (1982), the Victim's Bill of Rights.