NBC News boss explains Weinstein pass

NBC News chief Noah Oppenheim on Wednesday defended his decision to pass on an explosive story about Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults on women.

“The incredible story that we all read [Tuesday] was not the story that we were looking at when we made our judgment several months ago,” he told staffers at a meeting.

Ronan Farrow, who penned the investigative report published by the New Yorker on Oct. 10, started his reporting while at NBC News.

After months of reporting by Farrow, NBC News decided it wasn’t in shape to air, and allowed Farrow to take it elsewhere.

“Ronan very understandably wanted to keep forging ahead, so we didn’t want to stand in his way, and he took it to The New Yorker and did a ton more extraordinary work,” Oppenheim said. “He greatly expanded the scope of his reporting.”

But Farrow seems to have a different view of his work at NBC News.

“I walked into the door at the New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier,” Farrow told Rachel Maddow on his MSNBC show.

NBC News, he hinted, balked at reporting it.

To the editors at the New Yorker it was “immediately” obvious, Farrow said.

It is not accurate to say it was not reportable” at NBC News, Farrow said. “In fact, there were multiple determina- tions that it was reportable at NBC.”

Farrow’s story detailed a dozen instances of Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults on women over several decades — including three alleged rapes. The story also contained a two-minute audio taped by a 22-year-old woman working with the NYPD after she filed a complaint at her local precinct.

Weinstein has been fired by the Weinstein Co., the studio he founded with his brother. He said he intends to enter a sexual rehab facility in Europe.