PEACOCK FIGHT
NBC slams Ronan bombshell on Lauer rape, Weinstein whitewash
Now, NBC stands for Nothing But Chaos.
The Peacock Network, home to such groundbreaking news programs as “Dateline” and “Meet the Press,” is on the defensive, dodging an explosive report that says executives long ignored former “Today” anchor Matt Lauer’s alleged abusive behavior.
After author Ronan Farrow’s new book cast the news operation as TV’s Ground Zero of the #MeToo movement, News President Noah Oppenheim fired off a memo Monday accusing Farrow of lying about NBC’s handling of rape allegations made against Lauer, who was ousted in November 2017.
“Now that we’ve read Farrow’s book, it’s clear — his smear rests on the allegation that NBC’s management knew about and took steps to hide Matt Lauer’s misconduct before his firing in November of 2017. Without that, he has no basis on which to rest his second conspiracy theory — that his Harvey Weinstein reporting was squashed to protect Lauer,” Oppenheim wrote in the memo, which was obtained by the Daily News.
“Farrow alleges there were employees who reported Lauer’s behavior prior to November of 2017 and were paid settlements to silence them. Not only is this false, the so-called evidence Farrow uses in his book to support the charge collapses under the slightest scrutiny.”
Last week, Variety reported that former NBC employee Brooke Nevils accused Lauer of raping her while they were in Sochi, Russia, in 2014 to cover the Winter Olympics. Nevils’ identity and the nature of her complaint against Lauer were not known until tidbits leaked last week from Farrow’s forthcoming book, “Catch and Kill.”
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack immediately dispatched a memo of his own to staff members to deny the network ever covered up Nevils’ accusation against Lauer.
“The first moment we learned of it was the night of Nov. 27, 2017, and he was fired in 24 hours,” Lack wrote.
Lauer, meanwhile, broke his own silence. He denied Nevils’ claim, writing in a letter published by Variety that his encounters with her were “mutual and completely consensual.” Nevils then called Lauer’s letter “a case study in victim shaming” in a statement aired by “NBC Nightly News.”
Farrow, whose reporting on the alleged decadeslong sexual abuse of movie producer Weinstein helped launch the #MeToo movement and won him a Pulitzer Prize, initially started his reporting on the topic for NBC. When the network failed to publish any of his stories, Farrow said, he took his work to The New Yorker, which published several of his groundbreaking pieces.
Lack said in his memo that network executives let Farrow take his reporting elsewhere because it did not meet NBC’s broadcast standards.
In his memo Monday, Oppenheim again denied that the NBC knew about the accusation against Lauer and refuted the idea that it used the allegation to obstruct Farrow’s Weinstein report.
“Farrow’s effort to defame NBC News is clearly motivated not by a pursuit of truth, but an ax to grind,” Oppenheim wrote. “It is built on a series of distortions, confused timelines, and outright inaccuracies.”