Even as he’s in the midst of contract negations to stay as a non-exclusive contributor to NBC News, Ronan Farrow challenged the network–on its own cable channel–about why it passed on his bombshell Harvey Weinstein report.
“I walked into the door at The New Yorker with an explosive reportable piece that should have been made public earlier,” Farrow told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “And immediately The New Yorker recognized that, and it is not accurate to say that it was not reportable,” Farrow said. “In fact, there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.”
Sources tell TVNewser Farrow and his team had a 6,000-word draft article and a 3-minute script for a TV news story back in July, but, after much back and forth, with NBCU’s legal team involved, NBC News determined there wasn’t enough to air the story. Farrow, who was assigned the story back in December, was himself threatened with a lawsuit by Weinstein, he told Maddow.
Maddow actually held Farrow over for a second segment to discuss the media angle of the story.
“Why did you end up reporting this story for The New Yorker and not NBC News?,” Maddow asked.
“You would have to ask NBC and NBC executives about the details of that story,” Farrow responded. “I’m not going to comment on any news organization’s story that they did or didn’t run. But I will say that over many years, many news organizations have circled this story and faced a great deal of pressure in doing so.”
An NBC source with direct knowledge of the story told us last night their’s “was a sincere effort to nail a story, and we just didn’t have it.”
Farrow has also made appearances on ABC and CBS and he was live on NBC’s Today show this morning. But only Maddow asked him about the media angle, which brought cheers from an unlikely corner:
Video: Smart of @Maddow to press @RonanFarrow about why NBC didn’t greenlight/support him pushing his Weinstein investigation #TTT pic.twitter.com/JApEs07xoL
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 11, 2017
Farrow may be asked about the media side of this story later today as he’s slated to be on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper as well as AC360.