Ronan Farrow accuses Matt Lauer of rape

Ronan Farrow

So, in Ronan Farrow's new book, there's a rape accusation against Matt Lauer. They already reported  something about his conduct during the Sochi Olympics.

Variety reports:

In Sochi, Nevils was tasked with working with former “Today” co-anchor Meredith Vieira, who’d been brought back to the show to do Olympics coverage. In Nevils’ account, one night over drinks with Vieira at the hotel bar where the NBC News team was staying, they ran into Lauer, who joined them. At the end of the night, Nevils, who’d had six shots of vodka, ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice — once to retrieve her press credential, which Lauer had taken as a joke, and the second time because he invited her back. Nevils, Farrow writes, “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience.”

Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleges, Lauer — who was wearing a T-shirt and boxers — pushed her against the door and kissed her. He then pushed her onto the bed, “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” Farrow writes. “She said that she declined several times.”

According to Nevils, she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” Farrow writes. “Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’ She told me she stopped saying no, but wept silently into a pillow.” Lauer then asked her if she liked it. She tells him yes. She claims that “she bled for days,” Farrow writes.

Lauer has put out an open letter denying it.

I don't like Ronan Farrow. He defended his attacks against Woody Allen by saying that there was no evidence against Harvey Weinstein, either. Although there were dozens of victims in Weinstein's case.

Farrow said the same thing in the case of Brett Kavanaugh---Farrow found another Kavanaugh victim whose story seemed less plausible than others. Even MSNBC expressed doubt. There was danger that weak accusations would dilute the case against Kavanaugh, but Farrow said the same thing---there was no evidence against Weinstein, either.

That seems to be Farrow's standard of evidence except in the cases of his brother and sister, Moses Farrow and Soon-yi Previn, talking about childhood abuse they suffered at the hands of Mia Farrow. They need PROOF.

I don't know how the book will affect his future employment. You know how, in job interviews, you're not supposed to attack your previous employer? Farrow attacks NBC News for not running his anti-Weinstein story.

The book paints NBC News executives as obstructive in his Weinstein investigation. As Farrow amassed his reporting about Weinstein, Oppenheim asked him, “Like, is this really worth it?” and suggested no one knows who Weinstein is. Farrow was eventually told to stop reporting the story, because it was under review at NBC Universal. “This is a Steve Burke decision. It’s an Andy decision,” Farrow recalls Richard Greenberg, the head of NBC News’ investigative unit, telling him. Since he didn’t believe NBC would ever run his story, he took it to the New Yorker, where it was published in October 2017.

Sources at NBC News say they haven’t read the book yet, but they plan to defend the company’s decisions against Farrow’s claims.

In anticipation of the publication of “Catch and Kill,” Oppenheim told Variety earlier this month: “We are more confident now than ever in the decisions we made around Ronan’s reporting.”

NBC News has been bracing for what was expected to be a damning portrayal of the news organization and its leadership. Based on the fact-checking process for the book, NBC News is bracing for a blistering portrait of the news division and its leadership. The company is prepared to present its rebuttal to claims that may be in the book. Farrow “is entitled to disagree with the decisions we made but he’s not entitled to his own set of facts,” Oppenheim told Variety.