THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Wednesday, October 23, 2019 |B5
has weathered in recent years.
Among the questionable
calls: Signing former Fox
News anchor Megyn Kelly to a
huge contract only to cancelSome staffers at NBC News
say they feel a wholesale
change in management is
needed given the string of pub-
lic missteps that the divisioning seductively with an en-
tirely plausible cover story,”
Mr. Hayes said on his Oct. 14
show. “But of course, it’s the
very ease of that path that
makes it the enemy of the very
work that we as journalists
are trying to do.”
In an interview, Mr. Oppen-
heim said he wishes Mr. Far-
row could “just open his mind
to the possibility that all of
those people, all of his col-
leagues who made that deter-
mination were acting in good
faith...That there was not some
malicious far-reaching con-
spiracy.”
Mr. Farrow, he added,
“might still disagree with
some of the decisions that his
editor and colleagues and my-
self have made but he would
perhaps realize we all acted
with integrity and only in the
interest of upholding the edi-
torial standards that are so
important to this place.”both her shows and push her
out with a $30 million check;
giving “Nightly News” anchor
Brian Williams a second
chance on MSNBC after he
lied about his war-reporting
experiences; and not being
first to report on an NBC
video of then-presidential-
candidate Donald Trump brag-
ging about sexually assaulting
women to entertainment re-
porter Billy Bush.
“Frankly, in light of all the
miscues I’ve wondered how
the leadership of that place
survives,” said Michael So-
colow, a professor of journal-
ism at the University of Maine.
NBC came under fire from
one of its own on air last week
when MSNBC host Chris Hayes
questioned the network’s de-
fense that Mr. Farrow’s report-
ing on Mr. Weinstein wasn’t
strong enough.
“The path of least resis-
tance is always there, beckon-Weinstein story.
Mr. Lack said management
wasn’t aware of Mr. Lauer’s al-
leged misconduct before the
official complaint. “Any sug-
gestion that we knew prior to
that evening or tried to cover
up any aspect of Lauer’s con-
duct is absolutely false and of-
fensive,” Mr. Lack said in a
memo to staff before Mr. Far-
row’s book was published.
Mr. Lack is scheduled to re-
tire after the 2020 election,
and NBCUniversal Chief Execu-
tive Steve Burke plans to have
Mr. Oppenheim succeed Mr.
Lack, people close to Mr.
Burke said. Mr. Oppenheim, 40
years old, became president of
NBC News in 2017 after two
successful years at the helm of
“Today.” He initially joined
NBC News nearly 15 years ago
as a “Today” producer before
leaving to pursue a Hollywood
career. His screenwriting cred-
its include the movie “Jackie.”BUSINESS NEWS
Instead of breaking the big
story, NBC News has become
the big story.
The network’s top brass,
NBC News Chairman Andy
Lack and NBC News President
Noah Oppenheim, have spent
weeks playing defense in the
wake of fresh accusations
from former contributor Ro-
nan Farrow that NBC News sat
on his reporting about alleged
sexual harassment and as-
saults by movie mogul Harvey
Weinstein.
However, Messrs. Lack and
Oppenheim still have the con-
fidence of parent Comcast
Corp.’s NBCUniversal, which in
recent months renewed Mr.
Oppenheim’s contract, people
familiar with the matter said.
The contract renewal is a
strong endorsement for an ex-
ecutive who has been at the
center of such a controversy.
These contracts are typically
renewed for several years at a
time, and Mr. Oppenheim is
expected to succeed Mr. Lack
after the 2020 presidential
election.
In a book published last
week, Mr. Farrow claimed NBC
got cold feet over the Wein-
stein story he was working on
in the summer of 2017 for
myriad reasons—including an
alleged threat by Mr. Wein-
stein that he would reveal
damaging information about
“Today” host Matt Lauer.
NBC News has said Mr. Far-
row’s story wasn’t ready for
air when he was given permis-
sion to take it elsewhere. He
took it to the New Yorker,
where it ran in October 2017
and was awarded a Pulitzer
Prize, the highest honor in
journalism. Mr. Lauer was
fired from his job a month
later, after a colleague accused
him of sexual misconduct in
an internal complaint.
In Mr. Farrow’s book,
“Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies,
and a Conspiracy to Protect
Predators,” a former NBC
News employee, Brooke Nevils,
alleged that Mr. Lauer anally
raped her in his hotel room
during the 2014 Winter Olym-
pics in Sochi, Russia.
Both Messrs. Weinstein and
Lauer have denied the accusa-
tions against them. Mr. Wein-
stein is scheduled to go on
trial in January for criminal
charges including rape.
The allegations in Mr. Far-
row’s book have many NBC
employees feeling angry that
the network continues to make
more headlines for its internal
drama than for its reporting.
“No one at NBC is happy
about the fact that such a
huge story wasn’t reported by
NBC,” said one on-air corre-
spondent, referring to the
BYJOEFLINT
ANDBENJAMINMULLIN
Amid Tumult, NBC Executive Got New Deal
Noah Oppenheim became president of NBC News in 2017.MATT WINKELMEYER/GETTY IMAGESVerizon Communications
Inc. said it would give its
wireless customers on unlim-
ited data plans a year of free
access to Disney+, giving the
new streaming entrant a huge
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The video service from
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Geographic, among others. It
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Verizon is the largest U.S.
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band customers.
Disney+ is one of several
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vice free for a year to custom-
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Disney and Verizon will
share the cost of providing the
content to the carrier’s sub-
scribers, according to a person
familiar with the arrangement.
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Verizon to
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