NEW YORK (AP) – NBC News defended itself Wednesday after questions were raised about whether it had fumbled an explosive story about Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults that network contributor Ronan Farrow broke instead in The New Yorker magazine.
It was the same day NBC came under withering attack from President Donald Trump for a story the network DID report, about whether the president sought in a summer meeting to greatly increase the nation’s nuclear stockpile.
Farrow’s story, released by the magazine Tuesday, offered new details about Weinstein’s behavior with women that followed an investigation published last week in The New York Times. The Times’ story led to Weinstein’s firing from the film company that bears his name.
Farrow, who had a short-lived daytime show on MSNBC, had been working on the Weinstein story for NBC News. He told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that earlier this year, he had a woman who granted an on-camera interview about Weinstein’s behavior. NBC News President Noah Oppenheim said Wednesday that the network reached a point this summer where it didn’t feel all the elements were in place to air a story and didn’t stand in Farrow’s way when he wanted to take his reporting elsewhere.
Farrow said on MSNBC that he “walked into The New Yorker with an explosively publishable piece that should have been reported earlier and immediately The New Yorker recognized that.” He said there were “multiple determinations” at NBC News that he had a story ready to report.