NEW YORK _ NBC News Chairman Andy Lack issued a strongly worded defense of his network's decision not to air journalist Ronan Farrow's investigation of alleged sexual harassment, assault and rape by movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.
"For the past nine months, it has been our belief that the 'story' here is about Harvey Weinstein's horrendous behavior and about the suffering and bravery of his victims, rather than a back-and-forth between a reporter and his producer and a news network," Lack said in a memo sent to staffers Monday that was obtained by the Los Angeles Times. "However, we've watched with disappointment as unfounded intimations and accusations have traveled through media circles."
NBC News has been adamant in stating that it did not air Farrow's investigation, saying he did not have a single Weinstein accuser speaking on the record or on camera, with the exception of Rose McGowan, who withdrew her cooperation through her lawyer. McGowan had never mentioned Weinstein by name in her February 2017 interview with Farrow, who was working under a freelance contract for NBC News at the time.
The memo is Lack's first public comment on the network's handling of the story, which Farrow had published in The New Yorker last October and earned him a Pulitzer Prize. The news division's decision not to air Farrow's work on TV and allow him to take it elsewhere has become a source of embarrassment for the network, which over the past year had to deal with its own sexual harassment scandal involving fired "Today" co-anchor Matt Lauer. Farrow's former producer has also accused NBC of trying to kill the story.
The producer, Rich McHugh, on Thursday said in a statement that "at a critical juncture in our reporting on Harvey Weinstein, as we were about to interview a woman with a credible allegation of rape against him, I was told not to do the interview and ordered to stand down, thus effectively killing the story."
McHugh added that "those orders came to me from the highest levels of NBC."
In his memo, Lack fought back at the allegation that the crew had been canceled as a way to obstruct Farrow's reporting.
"Immediately after Farrow had parted ways with us, he asked for NBC cameras to record another anonymous Weinstein victim," he said. "Farrow conducted the interview but we declined the request for a crew because we believed filming another anonymous interview would not get us any closer to clearing the threshold to broadcast, and because he had already informed us he was pursuing the story for another outlet."
Lack also said his interactions with Weinstein or his attorneys during Farrow's reporting had no impact on the decision by NBC News not to run the story.
Repeated attempts by Weinstein and his legal counsel to contact Lack, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, or other network executives from April to October 2017 "were either completely ignored or met with a boilerplate commitment to allow them to comment if and when something was ready for broadcast," Lack said. "None of this was kept secret from Farrow. None of it was any different from the calls we receive on every other difficult story our investigative unit regularly breaks. And none of it played any role in our decision-making."
Lack said he was not aware of Farrow's investigation until he took a phone call from Weinstein in April 2017. Farrow had received an assignment from Oppenheim to report on a piece about Hollywood's "casting couch" four months earlier.
An internal report from NBC News that details its handling of the story said the division took "an extra step" in trying to vet Farrow's work so that it could get on the air. In August 2017, a separate team of three NBC News veteran journalists (two investigative reporters and one senior editor) examined Farrow's draft script for a piece and the underlying reporting.
"They are ultimately unanimous in their view that NBC News does not have a story that is ready for broadcast," the report said. "Their review also reveals that some of Farrow's claims and sourcing throughout the draft script are not consistent with his reporting."
None of the seven women named in Farrow's story for The New Yorker _ Asia Argento, Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, Lucia Evans, Emma de Caunes, Jessica Barth and Sophie Dix _ was willing to speak on camera for NBC News.
Farrow, who has previously said that his work on the Weinstein story at NBC News was "publishable," did not respond to a request for comment on Lack's memo. He has said he will detail his side of how NBC News handled the investigation in an upcoming book he is writing called "Catch and Kill."
