New York Post’s Page Six reported Wednesday that Ronan Farrow’s PR team told reporters not to ask any questions about the Woody Allen drama at Wednesday night’s Reach the World 14th Annual Benefit and Charity Auction, where the new MSNBC host was being honored with the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Exploration and Journalism for his contributions to global education and service.
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The Post article titled, “Precious Ronan’s rules for benefit: No personal questions” claimed Farrow’s flacks issued reporters a tip sheet with “conditions” forbidding press to ask any “off topic” or personal questions. But it turns out Reach the World, organizers of the event, was responsible for the tip sheet reporting guidelines, not Ronan Farrow or his team.
In a statement to TheWrap, Reach the World’s founder Heather Halstead said: “Ronan and his team did not request any restrictions whatsoever on reporters’ questions. Communications between Reach the World and members of the press have been the sole responsibility of RTW. We apologize to Ronan for this error.”
“There was a misinterpretation between the Page Six reporter and our event planners,” Halstead added.
A spokeswoman for Farrow’s new MSNBC’s show “Ronan Farrow Daily” also disputed the Page Six report.
“Ronan and his team did not request any restrictions on reporters’ questions. We’d only said that Ronan would have limited time to do press interviews based on the event timeline,” said MSNBC in a statement to TheWrap. “The tip sheet Page Six references was apparently created by the PR team hired by the organization. None of that came from Ronan or his team.”
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New York Post’s Page Six declined to comment.
Update 02/27/14:
Page Six published a followup defending their initial report. They included a PDF of the waiver the charity asked to be signed, as well as Halstead’s original comment from an email saying the tip sheet came “direct” from Farrow’s camp:
[Page Six] asked who the directives were coming from, and Halstead responded via email, “His team direct to you, but we would do it anyway any time there were circumstances such as these that required it.”