The president of NBC News told staffers Wednesday that the NBCUniversal unit was unable to come up with “all the elements that we needed to air” an investigation into Harvey Weinstein, even though freelance correspondent Ronan Farrow had started work on such a project under NBC News’ aegis last year.

“Ronan, who was not working for us exclusively, began reporting on that story for NBC. We are proud of that. We launched him on that story, we encouraged him to report that story. We supported him and gave him resources to report that story over many, many months. The notion that we would try to cover for a powerful person is deeply offensive to all of us,” said NBC News president Noah Oppenheim in a statement. “Like pretty much every newspaper and magazine in L.A. and New York, the New York Times up until last week, New York Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, you name it, we were on that long list of places that chased this thing, tried to nail it, but weren’t ultimately the ones who broke it.”

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