On Tuesday’s edition of Megyn Kelly Today, host Megyn Kelly reported that Rose McGowan gave an on-the-record admission to Ronan Farrow that Harvey Weinstein raped her, and NBC News sat on the scoop for months.
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.”
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 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.
Last Friday, the New York Times 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.”
