Rachel Maddow stood up for journalism and against her bosses on national television after becoming suspicious that NBC News had killed Ronan Farrow’s explosive reporting on Harvey Weinstein.
In Catch and Kill, Farrow’s account of his investigation, he recalls how Maddow pushed back on Farrow’s equivocating around why he brought his reporting to The New Yorker instead of publishing at his former employer.
“But there was Maddow, in her meticulous way, setting up our conversation, and pressing on the doubt I felt about even being in this building,” Farrow writes. After bringing back Farrow on air, despite orders otherwise, and after keeping him on past commercial break, despite orders otherwise, Maddow asks him point blank: “Why did you end up reporting this story for the The New Yorker and not for NBC News?”
Throughout the book, Farrow lauds his colleagues who tried their best to stand up to NBC leadership, including the women who put their careers on the line to hold since-disgraced anchor and alleged serial predator Matt Lauer to account. After his story’s publication, Farrow reports that several “on-air personalities called upset, one near tears,” to tell him that MSNBC President Phil Griffin ordered that Farrow be unbooked from shows.
Just days ago, as the world has learned from Farrow’s book that NBC News willfully attempted to protect Weinstein and disgraced anchor Lauer, fellow MSNBC star Chris Hayes took his own network to task.
Chris Hayes backs Ronan Farrow:
“Ronan Farrow walked out and within two months published an incredible article that not only won a Pulitzer but helped trigger a massive social reckoning that continues to this day. It’s the kind of journalism that you want to do as a journalist” pic.twitter.com/QD4qgDmgDk
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) October 15, 2019
Disagree with the partisan slant of some of their opinion and news reporters all you want, but against all odds, some journalists at NBC News tried to do their job with integrity.
Now, eight very powerful people have the leverage to ensure that Griffin, NBC News and MSNBC Chairman Andy Lack, and NBC News President Noah Oppenheim all lose their jobs.
In conjunction with the Washington Post, MSNBC is scheduled to host the next Democratic presidential debate on Nov. 20. The only candidates likely to make the stage are Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, and Tom Steyer. Unlike prior debates, every candidate on that stage has the staying power to safely assure that, barring some extraordinary event or rules change, they’ll make the subsequent debate stage. If all eight can agree to do so, they absolutely should threaten to boycott the debate unless Griffin, Lack, and Oppenheim are out of NBC News.
The atrocities of this unholy trinity are numerous, but in short, they silenced Farrow’s reporting after Weinstein blackmailed them with the Lauer allegations, which the network knew about but covered up anyways. And Griffin and Lack are both accused of sexual misconduct or harassment with staff on top of that.
Yet they still refuse to allow an external investigation into the company as Fox and CBS News rightly did when faced with a bad apple.
Hundreds of members of the NBC News team joined journalism with the hopes of speaking truth to power, not covering it up. They deserve better, and if the Democrats really want to stand for women and the free press alike, they ought to flex their power and demand that the network clean house.
