Ronan Farrow's investigative reporting on sexual harassment allegations against Harvey Weinstein was released Tuesday in a bombshell New Yorker piece, but NBC had the opportunity to first report his findings and slept on them, according to multiple sources inside and outside the network.
The story was in NBC's hands until August and was poised to include the audio of a New York Police Department sting where Weinstein admits to groping a woman, HuffPost reports.
It is unclear what concerns NBC had about the story, which included multiple women speaking on the record. The story relinquished by NBC was "nowhere close to what ultimately ran in the NY Times or the New Yorker," a network source told HuffPost.
NBC declined to comment on the record.
On MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" Tuesday night, Rachel Maddow asked Farrow why NBC didn't support his piece. Farrow is a NBC contributor, and told multiple people he was working on the story for the network, early in his investigation.
Video: Smart of @Maddow to press @RonanFarrow about why NBC didn't greenlight/support him pushing his Weinstein investigation #TTT pic.twitter.com/JApEs07xoL
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 11, 2017
"Look, you would have to ask NBC and NBC executives about the details of that story. I'm not going to comment on any news organization's story that they did or didn't run. I will say that over many years, many news organizations have circled this story and faced a great deal of pressure in doing so," Farrow said.
Farrow mentioned, for instance, the New York Times faced the threat of a suit from Weinstein, and he, too, has been threatened for his reporting.
"In the course of this reporting, I was threatened with a lawsuit personally by Mr. Weinstein," Farrow said.
Maddow circled back to the question about NBC, asking whether the story had been ready for publishing at the time he presented it to NBC.
Farrow confirmed that it was.
"There were multiple determinations that it was reportable at NBC," Farrow said.
Farrow is an American activist, journalist, and former U.S. government advisor under the Obama administration. He is the son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen.