Ronan Farrow took the stage on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show Tuesday night to open up about his damning Harvey Weinstein exposé for The New Yorker.
In the immediate aftermath of the piece, questions were raised about why Farrow didn’t publish his scoop with NBC, his current employer.
Maddow raised the issue and Farrow — as nicely as he could — admitted that his bosses had caved under pressure and said their subsequent claims that the piece he showed them was “not reportable” were false.
“Why did you end up reporting this story for The New Yorker and not NBC News?” Maddow asked point blank.
“You would have to ask NBC and NBC executives about the details,” said Farrow coyly. “I will say that over many years, many news organization have circled this story and faced a great deal of pressure in doing so.”
Farrow himself said that he had been personally threatened with a lawsuit by Weinstein.
Maddow pressed: “NBC says that the story wasn’t publishable, that it wasn’t ready to go by the time you brought it to them.”
Farrow pushed back.
“I walked into the door at The New Yorker with an explosively reportable piece that should have been public earlier and immediately, obviously The New Yorker recognized that,” he said. “And it is not accurate to say it was not reportable and there were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC.”
Farrow’s explosive New Yorker story included multiple new allegations against the former Hollywood titan, including the assertion that three women accused Weinstein of rape and audio of Weinstein admitting that he groped a model in 2015.