Should the statement in NBC News#Sexual Misconduct and NBC News that Ronan Farrow's story about Harvey Weinstein in The New Yorker had "very few changes" from his reporting while he worked at at NBC News be:
BC1278 (talk) 20:16, 18 August 2021 (UTC)
- changed, with further explanation. This is not in the cited sources. No reliable source cited in this section, or elsewhere, including Farrow's book, contends the reporting in the New Yorker had “very few changes” from his work at NBC News. In fact, Farrow said his investigation at NBC News was “explosively reportable” when he left NBC News, not that the story was the same as The New Yorker. The editor of The New Yorker, David Remnick, said Farrow had the "building blocks" of a story when he came to the New Yorker -- not a story ready to publish. . In fact, according to Ben Smith, the media columnist at The New York Times, the final NBC script draft by Farrow from August 8, 2017 had no on-the-record interviews with victims. whereas his New Yorker story named seven alleged victims. Farrow has since has backed off the assertion that all his drafts at NBC News had at least two named sources, saying he “misspoke." Farrow corrected the record to say he had victims “named or willing to be named.” ”]. For the purpose of starting a discussion only, here is a draft language to replace the "very few changes" statement beginning in graph two, sentence three. The actual disagreement here about Farrow's sourcing and the state of the story at NBC has generated a great deal of press coverage over several years. It warrants a more detailed explanation. I have attempted to fully represent both sides of dispute where each has credible media sources in the disagreement.WP: Balance. I have a WP:COI, declared and explained in full in the section just above, as a consultant to NBC News.
The New Yorker editor David Remnick said Farrow had the “building blocks” for a story already in place when he came to the magazine[1] and that the reporting was advanced but not ready for publication.[2] Oppenheim said the story that appeared in The New Yorker was not “the story that we were looking at when we made our judgment several months ago.”[3] On October 5, 2017, The New York Times published its investigation detailing accusations of serial sexual assault or misconduct committed by Weinstein, naming several alleged victims.[4] The New Yorker ran Farrow’s Weinstein story on October 10, 2017.[5] Farrow’s piece in The New Yorker named alleged Weinstein victims including Asia Argento, Mira Sorvino, Rosanna Arquette, Lucia Evans, Emma de Caunes, Jessica Barth and Sophie Dix. NBC contends that none of the women named by Farrow in The New Yorker were willing to speak on the record or be identified on camera.[6]
After the release of his New Yorker story, Farrow said that his investigation at NBC News had been “explosively reportable,” and that “there were multiple determinations it was reportable at NBC.”[7][8] Rich Greenberg, executive editor of the investigative unit at NBC News, said “The standard [for publication] would be, at a bare minimum, a credible person making an allegation on the record — willing to be identified by name — ideally on camera. We never quite got there.”[6]
NBC News came under heavy criticism, including among NBC News journalists, for letting a story that later shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service “walk out the door.”[5][9]
Farrow told NPR and Fox News that he had at least two on-the-record sources in all NBC drafts.[10][11] But in May 2020, Ben Smith of the New York Times reported he obtained the final draft script prepared by Farrow and it contained no on-the-record sources, though it had a “strong piece of reporting” that included an audio recording that appeared to have Weinstein admitting that he had groped an Italian model.[12] After the Ben Smith story appeared, Farrow said that he “misspoke” and that the women were “named or willing to be named.”[13] Erik Wemple, the Washington Post media critic said "As any journalist knows, “willing to be named” sources are not the same as “named” sources." [14]
- I am not well-versed enough in news reporting or the coverage of coverage of the report to make a detailed comment, but I do agree that the assertion that there were very few changes made to the piece indeed does not seem to be in the cited Vanity Fair piece—unless I missed it while reading it—and thus is inappropriate to maintain in the article. I note that the above does appear to be as balanced as it attributes comments to each source, and it is not (at least not obviously) undue. Given the extensive coverage as to what the state of the piece was when it was at NBC, it does feel appropriate to add summary of that. ~Cheers, TenTonParasol 16:46, 21 August 2021 (UTC)
- Kept, at least in its essence; strenuously oppose the proposed substitution, which places grossly WP:UNDUE weight on one side (citing numerous sources overtly hostile to Farrow at length, and countless sources within NBC, coupled with comparatively few sources disagreeing with them.) The cited source for the existing sentence says
He also insisted that there was a “consensus” across the organization that Ronan and I never had enough reporting to support a story that Weinstein was a serial predator—a laughable claim, given that it had taken Ronan only six weeks to finish our investigation and publish it in the New Yorker, where it went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.
That could be more cautiously-worded and attributed, but the massive paragraph suggested above is utterly unworkable out of hand - this is the main page for NBC News as a whole; devoting an entire paragraph to going over talking points-and-counterpoints on the status of the story isn't reasonable. Some elements of it (eg. using differences that various sources have alleged between the versions to argue they were distinct) are clear WP:SYNTH as well, especially the numerous "but..." bits where it overtly tries to cast doubt on various claims and counterclaims. --Aquillion (talk) 08:03, 23 August 2021 (UTC)
- What's there now ("very few changes") needs to be corrected, even if it's not with the language I provided as a starting point for discussion. BC1278 (talk)
References
Folkenflik, David (11 November 2019). "NBC Leadership And #MeToo". NPR. Retrieved 15 July 2021. There was no draft of this story at NBC that had fewer than two named women...
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