NBC News defended decision to pull Ronan Farrow’s Weinstein reporting

Bennett Reglin/Getty

• NBC News sent out an internal memo on Monday defending
  its decision to decline Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey
  Weinstein’s sexual misconduct allegations months before the
  story broke. 
• The 10-page memo sent to employees by NBC News
  chief Andy Lack follows allegations that Farrow and his
  producers were “ordered to stop” by executives who did not want
  the story to go out.
• The memo states NBC News spent eight months pursuing
  the story with Farrow, but chose not to move forward because he
  did not have sources willing to go on the record, and his
  reporting “did not hold up to scrutiny.” 
• Farrow ultimately took his reporting to The New Yorker,
  where it won him a Pulitzer Prize.
• Farrow responded to the memo, saying that his story was
  initially “cleared” but was later “blocked by executives who
  refused to allow us to seek comment from Harvey
  Weinstein.” 

NBC News sent out an internal memo on Monday defending its
decision to not broadcast Ronan Farrow’s reporting on Harvey
Weinstein’s sexual misconduct allegations months before the story
broke. 

The 10-page memo sent to employees by NBC News chief Andy
Lack follows allegations that Farrow and his producers were
“ordered
to stop” by executives who did not want the story to go out.

According to the memo, NBC News spent eight months pursuing the
story with Farrow, but a review of his work concluded it was
not “yet fit to broadcast. But Farrow did not agree with
that standard” and as a result they “parted ways”.  

The broadcaster said central to its concerns was that Farrow’s
reporting did feature sources willing to go on the record. At the
time, Rose McGowan, now a prominent voice against Weinstein’s
misconduct, was willing to be identified but refused to name
Weinstein in her testimony to Farrow. 

The memo added that in his draft script, Farrow misrepresented an
interview with an employee of Weinstein, and editors “found
several elements in Farrow’s draft script which did not hold up
to scrutiny.”

NBC News allowed him to take his reporting to the New Yorker in
the fall of 2017, where his stories won him a Pulitzer
Prize. 

The memo added that Farrow’s New Yorker article, published two
months after his departure from NBC News and days after the

New York Times broke the story, “bore little
resemblance to the draft script he produced at NBC News.” The
memo alleged it was Farrow’s decision to pursue the story
elsewhere.

Following the memo, former NBC producer Rich McHugh who worked
with Farrow on the story, responded on Twitter. 

“When you have an exclusive audio recording of Harvey Weinstein
admitting to sexual assault, in addition to a rape survivor
scheduled for an interview in three days, what journalistic
“ethic” would cause a news outlet to cancel that interview, not
air the audio tape, and let one of the most defining stories of
this decade walk out the door?”

McHugh, who recently left the network, said in a statement
that he was told to “stand down” from interviewing a woman “with
a credible allegation of rape.” 

“That was unethical, and a massive breach of journalistic
integrity.”

Farrow, who had avoided commenting on the matter, said on

Twitter that the memo contained “numerous false or misleading
statements.” 

“Their list of sources is incomplete and omits women who were
either identified in the NBC story or offered to be,” he
wrote. 

“The suggestion to take the story to another outlet was first
raised by NBC, not me, and I took them up on it only after it
became clear that I was being blocked from further
reporting.” 

Farrow added that his story was “cleared and deemed ‘reportable'”
by legal standards, but was later “blocked by executives who
refused to allow us to seek comment from Harvey Weinstein.” 

“There’ll be more to say at the right time,” he wrote.

Emily Nestor, a former Weinstein Company employee, who was
on the record for Farrow’s New Yorker story, said in a statement
she was prepared to go on the record for the NBC piece but they
were “not interested.”

Nestor wrote that she, along with model and Ambra
Gutierrez, had been willing to allow Farrow to use their
on-camera testimony in his reporting. 

“NBC further claims ‘…We wondered then, and still wonder
now, whether the brave women who spoke to him in print would have
also sat before TV cameras and lights.’ The condescension
dripping from this phrase is despicable,” she wrote. 

“The implication that these ‘brave women’ were just not
‘brave’ enough to go in front of a TV crew undermines all of the
dangers, uncertainties, and obstacles we faced in coming forward
in the New Yorker piece.”