On Tuesday’s edition of “Megyn Kelly Today,” host Megyn Kelly reported that Rose McGowan gave an on-the-record admission to Ronan Farrow at NBC News that Harvey Weinstein raped her, and NBC News sat on the scoop for months.
Returning to air after the long Labor Day weekend — which was anything but a quiet holiday weekend for NBC News, after multiple reports broke regarding the news organization’s handling of Farrow’s Harvey Weinstein reporting — Kelly told her viewers that McGowan and former producer Rich McHugh both claimed to her that McGowan went on the record and NBC News chose not to run the story.
“Late last night, Rose McGowan and Rich McHugh, the former NBC producer, both challenged that assertion, telling ‘Megyn Kelly Today’ that McGowan did go on the record with NBC in February 2017, after that on-camera interview with Farrow, and that she did name Harvey Weinstein as her rapist,” Kelly said on-air.
“There’s a lot to unpack,” Kelly continued during her broadcast. “What were seeing here is it McHugh… has now gone public with his accusations that NBC, he claims, blocked the story — NBC vehemently denying that, and saying they didn’t have anybody, they didn’t have anybody on the record…And Rose McGowan telling us that she was on the record for months and they didn’t use her statement. NBC saying if that’s true, it wasn’t communicated up the line. That’s a dispute between NBC and the reporters on the story, but this is getting really in the weeds and it’s getting really uncomfortable.”
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Kelly’s broadcast comes as many journalists have had to cover their own news organizations throughout the Me Too movement, from Savannah Guthrie announcing that Matt Lauer had been fired on the “Today” show, to Gayle King announcing Charlie Rose’s misconduct on-air on “CBS This Morning.”
NBC News did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment, though NBC News did offer a lengthy statement to “Megyn Kelly Today,” which was shown on-air, saying, in part, that McGowan never named Weinstein “as her attacker on camera in the February 2017 interview,” and that Farrow “did not indicate” to his editors that he wanted to proceed with airing the story, if he did in fact have McGowan on the record but off-camera.
McGowan’s on-the-record admission occurred off-camera in February 2017. Then, in the summer of 2017, McGowan’s lawyers sent NBC a cease and desist letter revoking permission to use her original interview — indicating that NBC News had McGowan naming Weinstein as her attacker on the record, though off-camera, for five months.
Media outlets had previously reported that McGowan had spoken to NBC’s Farrow about Weinstein raping her and then retracted her interview after his lawyers started threatening her. But the length of time that NBC had a McGowan interview on the record, without running it, has been unclear.
This past Friday, the New York Times and the Daily Beast both broke stories that NBC News had blocked Farrow’s Weinstein reporting with Farrow’s producer, Rich McHugh, blasting the organization, saying: “Is there anyone in the journalistic community who actually believes NBC didn’t breach its journalistic duty to continue reporting this story? Something else must have been going on.”
In response to McHugh’s claims, NBC News stated that any assertion that the organization tried to kill the story was an “outright lie.”
NBC News also stated that while Farrow believed his reporting was ready for air, “NBC disagreed because, unfortunately, he did not yet have a single victim of — or witness to — misconduct by Weinstein who was willing to be identified.”
Aside from McGowan confirming to “Megyn Kelly Today” that she had gone on the record, another one of Weinstein’s victims, Emily Nestor, said today that she had filmed an interview in silhouette and had tentatively offered to attach her name to the interview, but NBC was “not interested in this interview.”
Nestor’s statement and Kelly’s broadcast come after NBC News chairman Andy Lack released a lengthy memo on Sunday, saying that Farrow’s story was not ready for air.
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack sent an email to every member of the news department about Ronan Farrow’s initial investigation of Harvey Weinstein. pic.twitter.com/pItQ85TPWH
— Megyn Kelly TODAY (@MegynTODAY) September 4, 2018
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