Removal Of NBC News Chief Remains Controversial

NBC News president Noah Oppenheim quietly exited his division and was given a vague new gig last week.   The move remains controversial after more than five years he was largely blamed for refusing to expose since-disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a sexual predator.  

Fox News Digital reports Oppenheim famously told Ronan Farrow that his Weinstein reporting wasn’t up to snuff, so Farrow took it to The New Yorker where it won the Pulitzer Prize and helped launch the #MeToo movement. Rich McHugh, an investigative journalist who spent a year working directly with Farrow as NBC’s supervising producer for his Weinstein coverage, still blames Oppenheim for the decision to spike their reporting. 

"Weinstein’s best PR person," McHugh told Fox News Digital via text message once news of Oppenheim’s departure broke.

McHugh and Farrow attempted to hold Oppenheim, who was well liked by many staffers, accountable for years. McHugh penned a 2019 Vanity Fair piece that placed blame directly on Oppenheim and then-NBC News chairman Andy Lack. 

"They not only intervened to shut down our investigation of Weinstein, they even refused to allow me to follow up on our work after Weinstein’s history of sexual assault became front-page news," he wrote. 

Oppenheim’s eyebrow raising exit was buried in an NBC News press release that focused on New York Times journalist Rebecca Blumenstein taking a new position at NBC News that will consume many of his responsibilities. 

Instead of promoting Oppenheim, NBC brought in then-Univision honcho Cesar Conde to oversee NBCUniversal’s news assets. A little over two years later, Oppenheim is out and Blumenstein will report directly to Conde.