Author: John Koblin / Source: New York Times
The chairman of NBC News, Andrew Lack, waded into the matter of how the network had handled its reporting on Harvey Weinstein for the first time on Monday.
In an email to NBC News employees at the end of the Labor Day weekend, Mr. Lack defended news division’s conduct when the reporter Ronan Farrow and the producer Rich McHugh were pursuing a story on allegations of sexual misconduct against the film mogul last year. The news executive also denied that Mr. Weinstein had influenced the network in any way.
Mr. Farrow ended up publishing his findings on Mr. Weinstein, his accusers and his enablers in a series of articles for The New Yorker. Mr. Farrow’s work earned the magazine a Pulitzer Prize in public service, an award the weekly shared with The New York Times.
Mr. Lack sent his email, which the network shared with news outlets, four days after the president of NBC News, Noah Oppenheim, rose to the network’s defense in response to a charge made by Mr. McHugh. The producer told The Times in an interview last week that people “at the highest levels of NBC” had impeded his and Mr. Farrow’s attempts to nail down the Weinstein story.
“Contrary to recent allegations, at no point did NBC obstruct Farrow’s reporting or ‘kill’ an interview,” Mr. Lack, 71, wrote.
His statement goes against what Mr. McHugh, who worked in the investigative unit of NBC News until leaving recently, told The Times. He accused the network of “a massive breach of journalistic integrity,” and said unnamed higher-ups had stood in the way of a planned interview with a Weinstein accuser in August last year.
Nearly two months after Mr. Farrow stopped reporting the story for NBC News and joined The New Yorker, he published the first of his Weinstein articles. Since then, people in media and entertainment have wondered why the network allowed the reporter to go out the door with the makings of an award-worthy investigative story.
“This is an unusual situation for a news division,” Mr. Lack, who is Mr. Oppenheim’s boss, wrote at the beginning of his email to the staff he oversees.
Later in the message, he added: “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…
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