01x04 - The Producer

[bunniefuu]

It was a couple days before

we were gonna go to LA

to interview a woman with a credible

allegation of r*pe against Harvey.

And we were about to book

our flights

and then the decision was handed

down to me.

You are to stand down.

We're done here.

In that moment,

I realized a couple of things.

One, the story was dead at NBC.

But also, there was another story now

that I had a certain responsibility

to pay attention to,

which is the NBC k*lling the story.

Much of my reporting on Harvey

Weinstein has become synonymous

with The New Yorker magazine.

That's where the story ultimately ran.

But the reporting actually started

at NBC News,

where I was working

with producer Rich McHugh.

Rich lives in suburban New Jersey

with his wife, Danie,

and their four daughters.

Rich grew up in the suburbs too,

outside Chicago.

The youngest of four kids,

Irish-Catholic family,

I went to Jesuit schools,

played ice hockey most

of my childhood.

Rich loves ice hockey.

So actually I wanted to pursue

ice hockey,

that was what I thought

I was gonna do with my life.

But I quickly realized I wasn't as good

as the top players in the country.

And so I pivoted from there

and ultimately wound up at Columbia

in New York,

studying English literature and writing.

I never actually thought about

being a journalist until,

and you're gonna find this interesting,

I was at Columbia

and I watched The Insider.

You won't be satisfied unless

you're putting the company at risk.

Are you a businessman

or are you a newsman?

Al Pacino plays reporter

Lowell Bergman,

a 60 Minutes producer who convinces

a big tobacco whistle blower

to go public about a massive cover-up

at his company.

Bergman's problem though is that

executives at CBS are worried

they'll get sued,

and so Bergman winds up fighting

his bosses at the network.

And I was like, Lowell Bergman,

that guy's amazing.

So, Rich went into broadcast news.

He started out producing

at Fox News, then MSNBC,

then he spent nearly a decade

at ABC's Good Morning America.

When I met him he was trying

to settle into a new role,

at the Investigative unit

at NBC News.

I was trying to find my spot.

I was working with several

correspondents

and enjoying some of the work.

I went overseas,

but I hadn't found a lane.

I didn't have a correspondent that I was

gelling with particularly, and then

- And then we met.

- And then you come into the picture.

- Do you wanna tell

- Tell me your side, be honest.

My first Impression I was like,

I'm not sure I'm gonna like this guy.

- Gee, thanks Rich.

- You asked me to be honest.

I just remember

you were texting all the time.

"Is this right,

what are we doing?"

I hadn't been used

to that level of hands-on.

I actually wonder if they thought

we would just cancel each other out,

then they could just put us over

in the corner.

I don't know what the expectation was,

but I doubted

that we would develop

good work together.

But we did find a way,

and in our first year together,

we wrote and produced numerous

investigative stories for NBC,

traveling the country in rental cars

and progressively taking

on tougher topics.

NBC investigative correspondent

Ronan Farrow has been examining

some of the challenges facing a new

generation of college students.

There is someone out there

who has attacked me

and will probably attack someone

else and I live with that.

Do you blame Harvard for that?

I do.

That was my first experience

with that type of story.

I don't think you could watch that piece

and not have a different opinion

on the matter after it.

That was a precursor

to the Weinstein story for sure.

That year I pitched a series about

bad behavior in Hollywood,

and for months I got a crash course

in how hard a sell that topic is.

A story on pedophilia was deemed

too dark,

one on race was also rejected,

but I held onto a green light

on one tough story I'd pitched,

the casting couch.

It's a euphemism in the industry,

it's when powerful people seek

sexual favors from newcomers

trying to get a foot in the door.

And that fall, the term

was coming up again

because of something the actress

Rose McGowan had Tweeted.

Rose McGowan claims

she was sexually assaulted

by a well-known Hollywood executive.

She used the hashtag,

#whywomendontreport,

and wrote, quote,

because it's been an open secret

in Hollywood slash media,

and they shamed me

while adulating my r*pist.

The Tweets came up

in our planning meetings.

We went up

to Noah Oppenheim's office

and pitched kind the stories

that we wanted to go in on.

Noah Oppenheim is the President

of NBC News.

He also had a career in Hollywood,

where he wrote screenplays,

including one for Jackie.

Oppenheim had also heard

about the Tweets.

We kinda left there with not the

mandate, but like the blessing of like,

"if you can get Rose McGowan to do

an interview, it might be a good idea".

Suddenly, we weren't just doing

a story about the casting couch,

but about one particular

and powerful individual.

It was an unspoken but open secret

that Rose was Tweeting about

movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

So, I talked to Rose.

Rich and I would debrief

after my reporting calls.

She's in a good place.

She said it would be a painful thing

for her

and she wants to make sure

it's presented in the right way.

I don't think it's possible to overstate

what a risky move this was

for McGowan.

Weinstein had kind of reinvented the

business model for the independent film.

His movies had earned more

than 300 Oscar nominations.

Mr. Weinstein!

At awards shows he'd gotten literally

more thank yous than God.

I have to thank Harvey Weinstein.

Harvey Weinstein.

Meryl Streep once even jokingly

referred to him as God.

I just wanna thank my agent

Kevin Huvane

and God, Harvey Weinstein.

Leading up to it, we were not sure

if Rose would talk

and if anybody else would talk

and then Rose, God love her,

decided to just do it.

She felt her career had already been

derailed after the initial incident.

In mid-February, Rich and I headed up

into the Hollywood Hills

to see McGowen.

- All right, you guys good?

- Two cameras, marker.

Rolling.

Tell me about the first time you felt

the treatment of women

in this industry is problematic.

I didn't realize there was going

to be such collusion.

I didn't think there would be

so many treacherous women.

When I was assaulted I was set up

by a woman to be there.

Any woman that worked for that

perpetrator of mine knew it,

they all knew.

And the thing with trauma

is that it feels fresh

every time you think about it.

Sure, it's X amount of years ago,

but it's right there,

There's a frozen thing in your mind

and in your body.

You know it took me years

to become okay sexually again.

- Was this a physical as*ault?

- Yes.

Was this non-consensual?

This was

I was, for an hour, at a meeting.

And then on the way out

it turned into not a meeting.

Was this a sexual as*ault?

Yes.

- This was r*pe?

- Yes.

It was gut wrenching,

in a way that it was not like any other

interview I'd ever heard.

I thought to myself like,

holy moly, like this is real.

It got real right there.

- Have the lawyers watch this.

- They will be.

Watch it but not just read it.

And I hope they're brave too

because it's happened

to their daughter,

their mother, their sister, their aunt.

Fact.

It was April 2017,

about two months after we first

interviewed Rose McGowan.

I got a phone call.

I called Rich right after

to tell him about it.

- Hey, are you there?

- Yeah, I'm here.

So, I got another call from another

of Harvey's interlocuters.

The call was from a guy named

Matt Hiltzik.

Hiltzik is a PR strategist,

he's pretty well known in celebrity

and political circles,

works with a lot of famous clients.

For a time he was Harvey Weinstein's

flack at Miramax.

He was at an event called

Women in the World,

being headlined by Hillary Clinton.

He was calling from backstage.

Hillary's speaking and you know,

blah, blah, blah,

schmoozing, small talk and he said,

"so, you know Harvey's here,

who I've worked with for years".

And I'm like, okay.

And he's like,

Harvey just walked In actually.

"Who's this Ronan guy?

He's asking questions about me."

I told Hiltzik I don't do

ambush stories.

If this were to make it to air at all,

I'd be calling Harvey Weinstein

for comment or an interview

long beforehand.

And then, while I was relaying

all this to Rich

Hiltzik just texted me again now,

saying of Harvey,

he is sort of hilarious.

Gave your message.

He asked me to call you back.

- Right now?

- Yeah.

He was trying to put you

on the phone with Harvey?

I don't know, I think

it's a distinct possibility.

I haven't responded.

I could see arguments

on both sides of that.

Is he gonna send a PI to go

through my trash

and try to build a narrative against me,

I don't know.

I think if they know

that it's a long way out,

then they'll probably just try

and go above us

and try and k*ll it in some capacity.

Right.

He's just gonna try to find ways

to sabotage it.

This was the first time

we had confirmation

that Harvey Weinstein knew

I was investigating him.

The stakes were about to get

much higher.

I could hear applause in the background

as yet another luminary went onstage

to discuss women's empowerment.

We have to make a pledge that

we are going to raise our children

respecting gender with the hope

that in the next generation,

we start to move on out the predators.

Hiltzik did call me back later,

though not with Weinstein on the line.

He said Weinstein was upset, agitated,

that he'd dealt with this kind

of reporting before.

He also implied that Weinstein would

likely be taking some kind of action,

though wasn't clear exactly

what that meant.

The very next day, I got a call from

my boss, Richard Greenberg,

the head of the investigative unit

at NBC.

He started off with small talk,

asking about a book I was working on.

I called Rich again to update him.

He was sort of like, so I think,

where we stand now,

let's just kinda give it a rest.

I'm not saying don't work on it,

but just keep it on the back burner.

I don't know, you know me,

I'm super cynical. I don't know.

And soon,

Rich was getting the same signals.

Rich and I were both worried.

We decided we needed

to work quietly,

without alerting our bosses.

I was getting more and more interviews

with women with allegations

and with people around Weinstein

who had seen abuse.

But I'd heard about one piece

of evidence

that might blow the whole thing open,

an audio recording of Weinstein

made by an Italian model

named Ambra Gutierrez,

who was wearing a wire.

Five minutes.

Don't ruin your friendship with me

for five minutes.

I'll never forget the first time

I heard the audio.

You played it for me.

His voice was like so monstrous

and it was like chilling.

In that moment you saw,

at least I heard for the first time,

what all these other women

had talked about.

It was the first time

in my producing anything

that fear kinda just all of a sudden

injected itself into it.

Like the thought I had

at that moment was

this is the beginning of the end

of Harvey Weinstein.

In the middle of summer 2017,

five women had directly described to me

how Harvey Weinstein had harassed

or assaulted them.

Two were willing to be fully named

in the NBC story at that point,

McGowan and Gutierrez.

I'd also interviewed 16 former

and current employees

who said they'd witnessed harassment.

Five executives had gone on camera

to talk about Weinstein's

alleged predation.

Was it common knowledge that he was

being predatory around women?

Yes, absolutely. Everybody knew.

There's a large volume of these type

of meetings that Harvey would have

with aspiring actresses and models.

He would have them late at night,

usually at hotel bars

or in hotel rooms,

and in order to make these women

feel more comfortable,

he would ask a female executive

or assistant to start those meetings

and he would often dismiss them.

You'd get a phone number handed

to you and say call this person,

set up a meeting at this hotel.

And you'd call and set the meeting

and then it suddenly would be,

let's do the meeting in the room.

And then you'd walk someone up

and then close the door.

There was no one any of these

young women could go to?

If they did they were paid off.

They were encouraged

to not make this a big deal,

otherwise their career may end.

Anyone who was questioning

his behavior

or trying to show a spotlight

on his behavior,

he would use whatever resources

possible to stop them.

Each of them made a decision

to put themselves at risk,

like Rose did

and all these other women,

and talk to us.

They knew they were at great risk

because they knew Harvey had

private investigators,

and anybody kinda floating

around us in the story orbit

was kind of in a danger.

Rich and I, we felt confident

in what we had,

so did every other journalist

we consulted.

We brought it to our bosses. At first,

they had the same reaction.

The reaction was

- Am I allowed to swear here?

- Yeah.

The reaction was like, holy sh*t.

You guys got a lot of stuff.

When Richard Greenberg, the head

of the investigative unit,

heard the tape, he said of Weinstein,

f*ck it, let him sue.

He and Susan Weiner, the NBC News

General Counsel, decided

we were ready to seek comment

from Harvey Weinstein.

We all went to Noah Oppenheim,

the President of NBC News.

We went into his office,

we were all excited,

and we played the audio tape for him.

I remember watching him

and thinking like

He almost looked like ashen,

like the blood was like draining out

of his face or something.

Instead of, like, holy moly,

this is incredible,

it was like: "Hold on, what is this

we got here? Is there a story here?"

And I was like, what nonsense is this?

This is crazy.

He said,

I'll have to bring this to Andy.

I remember we went in the elevator

and you and I looked at each other

like, what just happened in there?

Did we witness the death

of our story right there?

A few days after that,

I was told by Noah Oppenheim

to pause our reporting.

He said the company was worried

about the legal implications

of me talking to sources who had

signed non-disclosure agreements

with Weinstein.

He cited a legal concept, tortious

interference with contract.

It refers to when someone deliberately

tries to mess up a contract

between two parties, usually to gain

some kind of business advantage.

It was baffling 'cause it was like

the script of the movie

playing out for us in slow motion.

Does he go on television

and tell the truth?

Yes. Is it newsworthy? Yes.

Are we gonna air it?

Of course not.

I remember Jonathan, my partner,

at one point just sort of shouting,

frustrated like, has no one

in this building seen The Insider?

Here's what I can tell you now that I

didn't know was happening at the time.

According to sources with direct

knowledge of the conversations,

as I was working on this story,

three top executives at NBC

conducted at least 15 calls

with Harvey Weinstein.

In several of those,

they had assured him

that the reporting had been stopped,

before I knew it had been.

In the same timeframe, Steve Burke,

the CEO of NBC Universal,

spoke openly about being in touch

with Weinstein

and about k*lling the story.

We can't run it, Burke told

one fellow executive,

I'll be getting these calls from Harvey

for the next year.

On August 8th, Oppenheim told me

the story was dead.

That day at 30 Rock,

Rich and I struggled to make sense

of what was happening.

This is why this guy continues

to get off.

Good God.

It's amazing man,

that he can win,

or at least hold this off and get

a news organization full of journalists

and producers to like just cave

on the story. It's just amazing.

When I told my sources that the

reporting wouldn't be going forward

at NBC, a lot of them felt like it was

yet another sign

that Weinstein would always succeed

in k*lling this story.

But they also decided to take another

leap and keep working with me.

I took the evidence

to The New Yorker,

and they looked at the same reporting

NBC had sent away,

and ran on all cylinders

to build on it and get it out.

Joining us once again

is Ronan Farrow,

a contributor for The New Yorker,

who broke this expl*sive story today.

NBC executives asked me not

to talk about why the story didn't run

on the network.

I told them I wouldn't bring it up,

but also wouldn't lie.

But, let me tell you folks,

that Rachel Maddow,

she's got a nose for a good story.

NBC says that the story

wasn't publishable,

that it wasn't ready to go by the time

that you brought it to them,

but obviously it's ready to go by the

time you got into The New Yorker.

I walked into the door

at The New Yorker

with an explosively reportable piece

that should have been public earlier

and immediately The New Yorker

recognized that

and it is not accurate

to say that It was not reportable.

There were multiple determinations

that it was reportable at NBC.

You sent me a text saying,

boom, I told the truth, I guess that's

former NBC correspondent now.

That was my last appearance

on MSNBC for a while.

Rich however, still had to go

into work the next day.

He and the investigative team were

called into a meeting with Oppenheim,

where Oppenheim largely

went on the defensive.

We tried and we wanna correct

the noise out there,

and we supported this story,

and we've been putting Ronan

on our air.

He tried to go down this road.

It was like the second-most mad

I've ever been in my life.

And people in the room described

it like we could feel

like the back of your neck

getting red.

I'm witnessing them rewriting

my history. I just went in.

Forgive me, but I have to correct you

on some things.

And it got messy.

A few weeks later,

more news broke at NBC.

Breaking News involving

a major media figure.

Matt Lauer has been fired.

After what was at the time called

an allegation of inappropriate

sexual behavior in the workplace,

Matt Lauer, the network's

biggest star, was fired.

And again, NBC executives went

to confront a room full of journalists.

Noah calls this meeting and walks

through how it's a sad day at NBC

and Matt Lauer is now fired

and a brave young woman

came forward, etcetera,

and described allegations against him

that were serious

and so we took action and fired him.

Does anybody have any questions?

I said, has anybody ever raised

any sort of sexual misconduct

claims against Matt Lauer?

We've all heard stuff about

Matt Lauer,

everybody in the building hears

that there's affairs and such,

but has anybody ever raised

like, sexual misconduct?

And he was like no, nobody.

And we went back

and looked in all the files

and there was nothing

about Matt Lauer.

In that meeting with

the investigative unit

and others over the ensuing months,

Oppenheim and Kim Harris,

the NBC Universal lawyer,

would swear that the company

hadn't been aware

of any complaints about Lauer,

and more broadly, hadn't reached

any sexual harassment settlements

with anyone in the prior six

or seven years.

Eventually I'd learn that

in that timeframe,

they'd actually reached

at least seven with women

who said they'd experienced

harassment of some sort at NBC News.

The network euphemistically

called them enhanced severance,

agreements that tied

non-disclosure provisions

with staggering amounts of money,

as women left or were forced out

of their jobs.

So, as NBC was arguing that it was

impossible for us to report

on Harvey Weinstein's sexual

harassment settlements,

they were upholding their own.

Going to work each day became

a little bit more soul crushing

because I was like, holding this in.

And it took over my life,

as my wife can attest.

You were kind of difficult to live with

for a little while.

But you start looking at someone's life

and it's gonna k*ll you internally,

you're gonna be miserable.

Your children

are gonna be miserable

seeing their dad is so unhappy

hitting this job every day.

You're never gonna be able to live

with yourself. So, you gotta go.

She's like, you're never gonna

be happy if you stay here

and if you don't just do your part

to say what you need to say.

Why did you feel it was your

responsibility to speak up?

Honestly it goes back

to the women in the story.

There was a tremendous responsibility

we shared

to move the ball forward,

because they risked a hell of a lot.

So when your own network says

no, you can't,

even though you've worked

on this for eight months,

I knew in my gut that was just wrong.

Rich resigned from NBC News

in August, 2018.

Soon after, he went

to The New York Times

and spoke out publicly about what

he saw happen inside the network.

So what made you wanna come

forward with this expl*sive piece?

I knew, after being in the news

business for 20 odd years,

this is wrong and I can't live

with myself

if I just kind of be quiet about this.

How did having four small daughters

weigh on these ethical decisions

that you were making?

It was a huge part of the decision.

What kind of world do I want them

to grow up in?

It wasn't just in that decision,

but even just the story as we were

going along.

I wanted them to look at me

when they were 18

and reading all this stuff eventually

to be like, my dad acted honorably.

Had I not done what I did,

I don't think I would be happy

with myself.

Rich left network news

and ultimately became

an investigative journalist himself.

I was grateful to have found a home

for the story,

but a battle lay ahead.

Weinstein and his lawyers

had pressured NBC,

and they were about to try

the same thing with The New Yorker.

At one point he seemed to make

an admission and the line went dead.

The reason that call got cut off

was that Harvey's lawyers

pressed the button to do so.

They knew he was going too far.

After Rich resigned, NBC News

released a memo asserting

that none of the women who had come

forward about Weinstein

had offered to go on the record

and denying that it obstructed

the reporting at any point.

NBC News has forcefully denied

k*lling the Weinstein reporting

to prevent details about Matt Lauer's

behavior from becoming public.

They have further denied

having any agreement

with Harvey Weinstein's legal

team or ever assuring him

the reporting was dead.