Matt Lauer Goes to Town on Ronan Farrow

Takes massive issue with Farrow's reporting about him in 'Catch and Kill'
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted May 20, 2020 4:40 AM CDT
Updated May 20, 2020 7:02 AM CDT
Matt Lauer Goes to Town on Ronan Farrow
In this April 21, 2016, file photo, Matt Lauer, co-host of the NBC "Today" television program, appears on set in Rockefeller Plaza, in New York.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

In an extensive piece published on Mediaite, Matt Lauer says that yes, "Ronan Farrow Is Indeed Too Good to Be True." That headline references the headline of a recent New York Times piece criticizing Farrow's journalism, a piece with which Lauer, the subject of two chapters in Farrow's Catch and Kill, wholeheartedly agrees. Lauer lays out a fair number of examples of what he sees as inconsistencies, manipulative phrasing, vague accounts, and more in the book, and points out Farrow's contentious history with NBC. But perhaps most damning, he points to multiple specific instances in which key people mentioned in the book, which revealed Brooke Nevils' rape claim against Lauer, were never contacted by Farrow or his fact-checkers. Mediaite also independently contacted those people and verified what they told Lauer.

Lauer, however, contacted those people, all of whom either denied what was written about them in Farrow's book or, at the very least, said Nevils had never described her relationship with Lauer as anything but consensual when talking to them. "The examples of shoddy journalism I’ve explored here are the tip of the iceberg," Lauer writes. "They are only some of the many instances I could have cited from the two chapters of this book about me. Maybe others will now begin to ask more questions about the 57 chapters of this book I haven’t touched on here." Farrow's response, via Twitter: "All I’ll say on this is that Matt Lauer is just wrong. Catch and Kill was thoroughly reported and fact-checked, including with Matt Lauer himself." The AP reports Farrow's publisher also backed the journalist, insisting he is dedicated to fact-checking. (More Ronan Farrow stories.)

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