Sooo…Is There Going To Be Any Consequence For NBC For The Fact That They Killed The Weinstein Story?

One thing that’s kinda getting lost in this whole Hollywood/Harvey Weinstein/Who Knew What And When story is the fact that the super disturbing audio recording that was released by the New Yorker via Ronan Farrow’s piece has been in the possession of authorities since 2015.  And according to this, it was also in the possession of NBC.

Huh.  Seems like kiiiiiind of a big deal, yes?  I mean, wouldn’t a legitimate news organization be ALL OVER something that newsworthy?

The answer to that is yes, if in fact it was a legitimate news organization. NBC has proven, once again, that it is nothing of the sort.

They buried Ronan Farrow’s story on Weinstein, y’all.

Now, some sources at NBC are trying to spin this by saying that they didn’t have Farrow go forward with the story because at the time, he didn’t have any victims on the record.   From the sourcelink:

But an NBC source promptly contradicted Farrow’s late-night claim, telling The Daily Beast in a statement: “Ronan has had a non-exclusive relationship with NBC News for the last year. He brought NBC News early reporting [on Weinstein] that didn’t meet the standard to go forward with a story; it was nowhere close to what ultimately ran in The New York Times or The New Yorker—for example, at that time he didn’t have one accuser willing to go on the record or identify themselves.

 

The NBC source continued: “He asked if he could bring it to a print outlet (presumably sources might be more willing to cooperate vs. going on camera), NBC agreed, with the understanding that if he got the story published he would come back and talk about it. The story he published is radically different than what he brought to NBC News.”

But what Farrow DID have when he first pitched the story is the now infamous audio recording of Weinstein pressuring Ambra Battilana Gutierrez to come into his hotel room.  Which means, of course, that NBC News has had that recording for MONTHS, and chose to bury it, because “it was decided that the sting tape, absent context, could not be the basis for a stand-alone story.”

Now, of course, they’re running the audio on their platforms, having to give credit to the New Yorker, which I find absolutely delicious.

More from the sourcelink:

According to a television-industry insider familiar with Farrow’s NBC News project, however, “Farrow and his producer had been working this for 10 months. They had eight interviews on camera, with a mix of silhouette and not-silhouette—so eight women speaking. They had an NYPD audio tape, and they had enough for a story. And NBC did everything they could to delay it, complicate it, and ultimately Noah [Oppenheim] killed it. NBC shut it down.”

 

This person continued: “It is what it is, and everybody can see it. It’s crazy. There’s no reason, journalistically, for the story to have been killed. Obviously, there was some other reason—and I don’t know what that is.”

What it likely is, of course, is that NBC has close ties to Weinstein.  This is what power looks like, and Weinstein had plenty of it.   So as we continue the conversation about literally EVERYONE being to blame for contributing to a culture that allowed Weinstein to be a disgusting scumbag without consequence (until now), we need to include the official NEWS ORGANIZATION OF NBC in that blame.  And anyone who works for the station who protected Weinstein is just as complicit as everyone else we’ve already said was complicit.

Like I’ve said a dozen times, there’s plenty of blame to go around.   Soooo – will Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers joke about it on their late night talk shows? I mean, they’re NBC employees – will they do what’s right and call out their own bosses?  Because this is bigger than just Hollywood now.  This is about the news organizations that the country is supposed to be able to trust as responsible journalists.

It’s hard to even type that without laughing.  And people wonder why sites like ours exist.  It’s because you cannot trust “legitimate news sources.”

GAWD.