Former NBC producer Rick McHugh recounted how the network delayed stories he worked on with Ronan Farrow about Harvey Weinstein and even killed some at the request of Weinstein himself.
“I witnessed firsthand during the year I spent at NBC News after Ronan published our reporting in the New Yorker — and as Ronan has further documented in his forthcoming book, Catch and Kill — Lack and Oppenheim were the ones who were lying,” McHugh said in a Friday article published by Vanity Fair about the investigation into Weinstein.
“They not only personally intervened to shut down our investigation of Weinstein, they even refused to allow me to follow up on our work after Weinstein’s history of sexual assault became front-page news,” he wrote.
McHugh accused both Noah Oppenheim, NBC’s news president, and Andrew Lack, NBC’s news chairman, almost a year ago of attempting to cover up the Weinstein story.
“The assertion that NBC News tried to kill the Weinstein story while Ronan Farrow was at NBC News, or even more ludicrously, after he left NBC News, is an outright lie,” NBC News said in a statement at the time.
However, McHugh said, “They behaved more like members of Weinstein’s PR team than the journalists they claim to be. Thanks to them, a leading national news organization, in broad daylight and with zero remorse, abdicated its single greatest responsibility — to relentlessly pursue and tell the truth.”
He claimed that as he and Farrow were about to interview some of the women who had accused Weinstein of sexual assault, Rich Greenberg, the head of NBC News’ investigative unit, told the pair, “No further calls. You are to stand down.” McHugh said the orders came from Oppenheim.
When Farrow and McHugh later tried to write a story about Weinstein getting money funneled to him from a charity, NBC again killed the story. McHugh said he learned afterwards the story was killed on Weinstein’s request.
“HW is saying that NBC promised him yesterday that the story was killed and they would not pursue any stories about him,” McHugh said Farrow texted him.
Six weeks later, Farrow and McHugh had their work published in the New Yorker. Both Lack and Oppenheim remain at NBC.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to accusations of sexual misconduct brought by more than 70 women. His trial is set to take place in January.
