Journalist Ronan Farrow said Thursday he also was the target of “blackmail efforts” from the National Enquirer’s parent company for his reporting, shortly after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said the company tried to blackmail him.
Farrow received the alleged threats over his reporting last year about the National Enquirer’s purchase of the rights to a never-published story about former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s claims of an affair with President Trump before his election, he said.
“I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar ‘stop digging or we’ll ruin you’ blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.)” Farrow tweeted.
I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.) https://t.co/kHQdWIkVjV
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) February 8, 2019
Farrow made the allegation after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos published a blog post on Medium accusing the tabloid of trying to extort and blackmail him by threatening to release embarrassing photos of him unless he stopped trying to investigate how the tabloid obtained salacious text messages between him and his mistress.
In the blog post, Bezos included copies of emails from representatives of American Media Inc., also known as AMI.
Those emails demanded Bezos halt his investigation and state publicly that the tabloid’s previous coverage of him wasn’t politically motivated.
But “any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat,” he said, “because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?”
