Ronan Farrow had already left NBC News. But a top lawyer at the network threatened to smear him if he continued to pursue the Hollywood mogul, multiple knowledgeable sources say.
The producer who worked alongside
Ronan Farrow at NBC News on his Harvey Weinstein investigation quit in protest earlier this month.
Rich McHugh tendered his resignation on Friday, Aug. 17, a year to the day that the Weinstein story left with Farrow. Since then, Farrow has won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles that revealed allegations of sexual harassment and assault—and questions have lingered about why the network gave up on the story that helped launch the
#MeToo movement.
NBC News has long insisted the Weinstein exposé wasn’t ready to run on air or online, contrary to Farrow’s claims that it was. Farrow’s story, which ultimately ran in
The New Yorker, was part of a series that ultimately won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, earned him in the prestigious George Polk Award for National Reporting, and garnered near-universal praise from his colleagues.
The Daily Beast has uncovered new details of how the process went awry, including alleged threats from NBC, back-biting inside the network about who was truly responsible, and a previously unreported ultimatum by Weinstein’s attorneys.
According to multiple sources familiar with the matter, NBC News General Counsel Susan Weiner made a series of phone calls to Farrow, threatening to smear him if he continued to report on Weinstein.
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