00:00NBC News president Noah Oppenheim is pushing back against Ronan Farrow's claims
00:04about the network in his explosive new book, Catch and Kill.
00:09Farrow's book, Catch and Kill, Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,
00:13which will be released on Tuesday, details NBC's alleged secret payouts and how
00:17Matt Lauer's alleged indiscretions may have played a role in the network's decision to
00:22kill Farrow's Weinstein expose that the reporter had originally planned to take to NBC
00:27but eventually published in The New Yorker.
00:29NBC News chairman Andy Lack initially fired back in a staff memo saying Farrow
00:34uses a variety of tactics to paint a fundamentally untrue picture.
00:38Farrow then responded with an interview with Good Morning America where he stood by his
00:42reporting and reiterated that the book was extensively fact-checked.
00:46But now Noah Oppenheim is stepping in to respond in detail to Farrow's book.
00:51On Monday, one day before the book's release, the NBC News president told his staff in a memo
00:56calling Lauer's actions abhorrent and emphasizing the anger and sadness the former
01:00Today Show host's actions have caused.
01:02In the memo obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Oppenheim goes on to say,
01:06Ronan Farrow's book takes that undeniable fact and twists it into a lie, alleging we're a
01:11company with a lot of secrets. We have no secrets and nothing to hide.
01:15He continues saying,
01:16Farrow alleges there were employees who reported Lauer's behavior prior to November of 2017
01:21and were paid settlements to silence them. Not only is this false, the so-called evidence
01:26Farrow uses in his book to support the charge collapses under the slightest scrutiny.
01:30The note goes on to share the internal analysis made by the NBCU legal team stating that
01:35they found only three examples that Farrow alleges are Lauer-related before 2017.
01:40But the note adds that it involves employees who, by their own admission, made no
01:44complaint to management and whose departure agreements were unrelated to Lauer
01:48and completely routine. Those three examples were in reference to a woman who, in the book,
01:53Farrow says shared the account of her incident with then-anchor Ann Curry, an on-air personality
01:57who departed in 2012, and a senior member of the Today Show team who departed in 2017
02:03with an alleged seven-figure payout. Oppenheim goes on to say,
02:17Farrow responded to Oppenheim's six-page memo during an appearance on CBS This Morning saying,
02:22Look, this book is an extraordinarily, meticulously fact-checked work of investigative journals.
02:27It's two years of reporting. One of the senior fact-checkers at The New Yorker checked it.
02:31I'll let the reporting in the book stand on its own. We're very confident in it.
02:34For more ongoing updates to the story, head to THR.com.
02:37For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Neha Joy.
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