NBC News president lashes out Ronan Farrow in memo

NBC News president Noah Oppenheim called out Ronan Farrow’s upcoming book “Catch and Kill” in a lengthy company wide memo sent Monday, Oct. 14, 2019, Page Six reported.

• The book alleges that NBC was aware of sexual misconduct allegations against former “Today” anchor Matt Lauer but failed to take action to prevent it from happening again.
• Oppenheim denies this statement in the memo and also says the network has reviewed the book, which is slated for an Oct. 15 release.
• “As we’ve said since the moment (Lauer) was fired, his abuses should never have happened,” the memo reads. “Ronan Farrow’s book takes that undeniable fact and twists it into a lie — alleging we were a ‘company with a lot of secrets.’”
• He also lashes out at Farrow, calling him a disgruntled former employee with an “axe to grind” against the network.
• Farrow is a former NBC News employee who alleges that he tried to get NBC to report on sexual harassment allegations against media mogul Harvey Weinstein — but NBC buried it.
• Farrow goes on to allege that Weinstein scared the network by threatening to reveal Lauer’s history of alleged sexual harassment.
• It was revealed that Oppenheim had written columns while in college that were anti-feminist and complaining about an NBC sportscaster who was fired for alleged misconduct.
• “The only three examples we can find that Farrow alleges are Lauer-related before 2017, with even minimal detail, involve employees who by their own admission made no complaint to management, and whose departure agreements were unrelated to Lauer and completely routine,” the memo continues.
• Oppenheim’s memo continues to dispute another series of facts alleged by Farrow.
• Farrow, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on Weinstein in The New Yorker continues to stand by his reporting.
• The full version of the memo is available here.