TO HARV OR HARV NOT
NBC, Farrow dispute if sexposé ready to run
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack pushed back against accusations that he quashed Ronan Farrow’s investigation into Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assault — but Farrow refuted details of Lack’s story.
Last week, multiple reports claimed NBC threatened Farrow if he proceeded with his coverage of Weinstein. Farrow’s former producer Rich McHugh, who recently left his position at the network, told The New York Times that NBC actively tried to block the story, which he called “a massive breach of journalistic integrity.” The Daily Beast also cited multiple sources who said NBC’s general counsel threatened to smear Farrow (photo) if he continued his reporting.
NBC denied the allegations at the time, but Lack doubled down Monday in a lengthy memo that detailed exactly why he did not believe Farrow’s report was ready for publication.
“We spent eight months pursuing the story but at the end of that time, NBC News — like many others before us — still did not have a single victim or witness willing to go on the record. (Rose McGowan—the only woman Farrow interviewed who was willing to b had refused to name Weinstein and then her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter.) So we had nothing yet fit to broadcast. But Farrow did not agree with that standard. That’s where we parted ways — agreeing to his request to take his reporting to a print outlet that he said was ready to move forward immediately,” Lack wrote. “Seven weeks later, and five days after Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke the Weinstein story in e New York es, Farrow blished the t in a series outstanding ries for The w Yorker, ning great laim and attion, all of ich is well erved. “That story ed the foling victims rgento, Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, Lucia Evans, Emma de Caunes, Jessica Barth and Sophie Dix. Not one of these seven women was included in the reporting Farrow presented while at NBC News.” Lack also challenged claims Weinstein himself had a hand in NBC’s decision not to publish, which he called “baseless speculation,” and provided a timeline of all correspondence with Farrow in an attempt to disprove outside coercion.
In October, shortly after his story published, Farrow told Rachel Maddow that he “walked into the door at The New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public” and claimed that NBC had already determined that it was ready for publication.
Lack, however, said Monday that NBC had convened “an independent group of the most experienced investigative journalists in our organization to review his material with fresh eyes” in August of that year. That group, he said, determined that Farrow’s story was “not ready for air.”
Farrow, however, released a response Monday evening contending the new NBC memo “contains numerous false or misleading statements.”