NBC tried to protect Pervy Winestain

Good day all. The story of Pervy Winestain, aka Harvey Weinstein, continues and is now dragging down others. These were people who covered for Pervy. Now we have a report that a major news organization spiked a story on Pervy’s antics.

This story started coming out yesterday, (At least that’s the earliest I’ve seen), and the shock waves are still blasting around the internet. The story begins on MSNBC when Rachel Maddow asked the reporter, Ronan Farrow, who broke the story on Pervy Winestain why it wasn’t run on NBC.

When Maddow asked why Farrow’s feature ended up at The New Yorker rather than at NBC, where he is employed as a correspondent, he replied, “You would have to ask NBC and NBC executives about the details. I’m not going to comment on any news organization’s story that they did or did not run.”

This has set NBC scrambling. Bluntly, spiking this story is similar to what happened back in the 90’s when Time spiked the Monica Lewinski story and Matt Drudge, founder of the Drudge Report found it and ran with it. That was the story that made the Drudge Report. As for NBC’s excuses, here are some of the details, NOT from NBC, but from Fox News:

NBC News is under fire inside and outside of 30 Rock for passing on the story that has turned Hollywood on its head – movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s decades of preying on women seeking to break into the movie business.

The Peacock’s attempts to explain why former MSNBC host Ronan Farrow’s expose on Weinstein never made it on the air, despite extensive, on-the-record interviews and a damning audiotape of Weinstein himself, have fallen flat as the story has exploded.

“Who at NBC News passed on this story?” asked Mediaite columnist and Managing Editor Colby Hall. “Why would they choose not to cover such an enormous and important story? And was there some sort of mandate from above?”

Oh I think we know the answer to this. The story was ordered killed since it would have done just what it is doing now. Torpedoing Pervy Winestain.

Farrow, who took his story to The New Yorker with an 7,741-word opus that may have driven a stake through the heart of one of Hollywood’s biggest power players, reportedly worked on the story for nearly a year.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what old school reporting is. Doing the hard work and taking the time to get all the facts. Something that people who call themselves “Journalists” are loathe to do. As to the excuse used by NBC News to spike the story?

Farrow, who had his show canceled in 2015 and now has a non-exclusive relationship with NBC, was told months before publication his Weinstein scoop didn’t meet NBC’s standards. An NBC insider said Farrow’s story didn’t have a specific accuser willing to go on the record at the time

NBC has standards? Since when?

Farrow then asked if he could bring it to a print outlet, and NBC agreed as long as he promised to discuss the story on “NBC Nightly News” if it turned out to be newsworthy.

Oh, I think it achieved newsworthiness. Actually, I think it went into the equivalent of lunar orbit in newsworthiness.

Well, it was not only newsworthy, it dominated the entire news cycle and rocked the entertainment industry with new allegations of rape and harassment by one of the most powerful men in Hollywood.

This is the second time NBC blew a story.

Roughly one year ago, NBC News sat on the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape of then-candidate Trump making lewd sexual comments about women. The Washington Post broke the story while NBC News corporate lawyers reportedly considered what to do with the video – and the Post took just five hours to vet the same footage.

The Trump locker room story was basically an attempt to kill his campaign and get Felonia von Pantsuit elected. It did do some damage, but failed in it’s goal of getting Felonia elected. What it did do was show just how many in the GOP(e) were perfectly willing to have President von Pantsuit if it meant stopping Donald Trump.

In any case, it showed that Trump talks like your average guy in a locker room. He never assaulted women. Pervy Winestain used his position to do just that. Basically, President Trump talked the talk, but Pervy Winestain walked the walk…right into a buzzsaw.

NBC News President Noah Oppenheim made the decision not to run Farrow’s story, according to The Daily Beast.

Oppenheim is a screenwriter who has often told industry colleagues that he’s likely to one day return to Hollywood and resume that career.

I think we just found the reason why the story was spiked. I think Oppenheim can kiss his plans goodbye now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up being invited to seek other opportunities elsewhere by NBC’s board of directors.

When Farrow was told his story wasn’t going to be run, he went to the New Yorker. As they say, what happened next is why some periodicals get Pulitzers and others get shown the door.

Farrow disagreed when Maddow brought up NBC’s claim that the story didn’t meet the network’s standards, saying he “walked into the door” of The New Yorker and the magazine “immediately” recognized that the story was ready for publication. Farrow said it is not accurate to say the story wasn’t ready for publication when NBC passed on it.

“In fact, there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC,” he said.

As for NBC’s Oppenheim, he had this load of horse manure to say.

Oppenheim issued a statement saying, among other things, “The notion that we would try to cover for a powerful person is deeply offensive to all of us… we didn’t feel we had all the elements that we needed to air it.”

However, the HuffPost reporter who brought NBC’s decision to light responded to the statement, reminding readers that NBC News had audio of Weinstein admitting sexual assault.

NBC’s handling of Weinstein’s sexual harassment allegations have been curious from the start. The HuffPost’s Yashar Ali pointed out last week that CBS and ABC covered the initial New York Times report, but “NBC Nightly News” failed to cover it and “Today” didn’t give it nearly as much attention as NBC’s rivals. In addition, NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” failed to address the Weinstein scandal. The show’s creator, Lorne Michaels, told the Daily Mail that, “It’s a New York thing,” when he was asked why the show avoided the Weinstein allegations.

Oh I think it’s safe to say Oppenheim was trying to protect Pervy Winestain, and his potential return to Hollywood. This begs the question, what was NBC Management thinking when they hired a screenwriter to manage the News division? Shouldn’t they have put someone in place who has a history of, oh I don’t know, working in the news field?

Now a few facts. Roan Farrow is Mia Farrow’s son. His mother accused Woody Allen of molesting her adopted daughter, who he later married. This was the excuse used by NBC to spike the story.

Insiders tell Fox News that Farrow — who’s publicly supported his mother Mia Farrow’s campaign to accuse Farrow’s father, Woody Allen, of molesting an adopted daughter – lacked credibility within NBC as a journalist, especially on the topic of celebrities accused of sexual offenses.

Well, I guess Farrow has proven them wrong, hasn’t he?

NBC denies these issues had anything to do with their decision to kill the Weinstein story.

But Oppenheim and his boss, Andy Lack — already under considerable pressure over their hugely expensive hire of Megyn Kelly – are now scrambling again to give a credible explanation for why they sat on an explosive audiotape of a powerful man behaving badly.

Good luck with that. NBC was scooped big time, and it’s beginning to look like the bigwigs were actively protecting Pervy Winestain. The one thing any news agency can’t afford to have, (Or at least they used to), is a loss of credibility. We’ve been watching most of the Main Stream Media going after President Trump tooth and nail, publishing stories that later turned out to be wrong, and in many cases, outright false.

I really doubt that Roan Farrow likes President Trump, but that does not lessen the hard work and good reporting he did in writing this story. Besides sinking Pervy Winestain, he may have taken out a few bigwigs at NBC, as well as a few of Pervy’s enablers in Hollywood. He definitely should be given a pat on the back for this one. NBC News?

Thatisall

~The Angry Webmaster~

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