NBC News Is Facing Internal Rebellion
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Sources tell FTVLive that the brass at NBC are just waiting for this to all blow over.
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack and News President Noah Oppenheim were called out by Ronan Farrow in his book Catch and Kill for spiking the Harvey Weinstein story and for their handing of the Matt Lauer fiasco.
Somehow both Lack and Oppenheim have kept their jobs and people inside NBC think that’s because the mismanagement at the network extends up the ladder at NBC and Comcast.
A story in the Huffington Post says that the internal rebellion at NBC is growing and that many say Lack and Oppenheim need to go.
MSNBC hosts Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes have criticized NBC management on-air.
When asked for comment, NBC News referred HuffPost to statements Oppenheim and Lack made before Farrow’s book came out on Oct. 15.
NBC insiders say that both Lack and Oppenheim feel that if that can just make it through a few more weeks, the media will move on from this story and they will be safe.
“While Maddow came out hard against her bosses, it is likely she has now said her piece and will not address the matter again,” said one NBC staffer to FTVLive.
This appears to be what Oppenheim and Lack are banking on.
Christine Nguyen, a producer at NBC News Digital, helped a unionizing effort at NBC and says “The last few weeks have been really animating for people,” she said. “It sped up the process.”
Nguyen and others say their plan to unionize was hatched in the wake of Lauer’s firing in 2017 when it became clear that there was a problem with reporting sexual misconduct at the network.
“There is apparently a culture where people who might have known about this felt uncomfortable or unwilling to go to HR or to go to management,” Nguyen said. “That is something that needs to be addressed.”
“As a sexual assault survivor and someone who cares very deeply about this stuff, I feel as though NBC has not considered how its employees would feel about working for a man like Noah Oppenheim,” another NBC reporter told HuffPost. “A man, by Farrow’s account, who completely dismissed the fact that multiple women were accusing Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault as not a news story.”
Current and former employees say they want a true independent investigation of what happened at NBC News regarding Lauer, the Weinstein story, and any other incidents of internal sexual misconduct. Time’s Up, the organization founded in the wake of the Me Too movement, has also called for NBC to conduct an external investigation.
So far, in the wake of the Lauer incident, NBC has only conducted an internal investigation, ultimately putting out a report written by its own lawyers, who claimed there aren’t problems at the company.
“Doing an internal investigation is like asking the fox with feathers hanging from its mouth to investigate the missing chickens. I mean, come on,” said Liz Stapp, a professor at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business who studies corporate boards.
NBC says there are no plans to do an outside investigation.
