In Ronan Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, the journalist writes about a “testy” phone call with NBC News’ general counsel Susan Weiner in which she warned him against identifying himself as an NBC News reporter while reporting on disgraced producer Harvey Weinstein. “Obviously we don’t want to publicly discuss your contract status, but we will be forced to do so if we receive any more complaints about this,” he says, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “She used the term ‘terminated,’ which was not something I had been told before,” Farrow says. “Subsequent to that, I did appear [on air] with my full job title, so I don’t know what it meant. But that is not a news organization that is eager to get the story and just couldn’t.” Farrow’s book confirms much of the reporting The Daily Beast published last year about NBC. In August, The Daily Beast reported how Weiner made a series of phone calls to Farrow, threatening to smear him if he continued to report on Weinstein.
A spokesperson for NBC News, speaking on the condition of anonymity, vigorously denied those allegations. “Absolutely false,” the spokesperson told The Daily Beast at the time about the phone call. “There’s no truth to that all. There is no chance, in no version of the world, that Susan Weiner would tell Ronan Farrow what he could or could not report on."
