Matt Lauer Joins Attack On Ronan Farrow One Day After Blistering New York Times Op-Ed

Matt Lauer is hitting back at Ronan Farrow.

Just one day after the New York Times ran a highly critical op-ed on the journalist and author, the former Today host wrote his own opinion piece slamming Farrow’s methods.

In a lengthy article posted to Mediaite on Tuesday, Lauer accuses Farrow of failing to check any of the claims made by his rape accuser Brooke Nevils, failing to provide any evidence, and deliberately used misleading language to manipulate readers.

“In late November 2017, I was fired from my job at the Today show after admitting to having a consensual, yet inappropriate relationship with a fellow employee in the workplace. NBC said it was a violation of company policy, and it ended my 25-year career at the network,” he wrote.

“I say these words with sincerity and humility. I am sorry for the way I conducted myself. I made some terrible decisions, and I betrayed the trust of many people.”

“If this story had ended there you would not be reading this. But, it did not end there.”

In the parts of Farrow’s book “Catch and Kill” that relate to him, Lauer claimed he knew Farrow didn’t fact check with any of the sources — because Lauer did himself.

He details four potential witnesses mentioned in the book that could corroborate Nevils’ account of certain events; Lauer claimed to have tracked down each of them (one taking as little as 15 minutes) to ask if Farrow ever reached out to them; he never did, Lauer claims.

(An editor’s note at the top of the piece confirmed all four witnesses confirmed Lauer’s account).

Lauer claims to have spoken to the would-be witnesses over the phone, in sometimes hours-long, sometimes awkward conversations, including former bosses and ex-boyfriends of Nevils’ who were mentioned in the book, but not by name; each of which, Lauer claims, Farrow never bothered to reach out to.

Lauer also accuses Farrow of using purposely misleading language, pointing to one example he says is on page 375 of “Catch and Kill”, in which Farrow writes: “Over the course of 2018, I’d learn of seven claims of sexual misconduct raised by women who worked with Lauer.”

Lauer claims that while the sentence could be technically correct, those accusations were not against him; merely he had worked with seven women who had made sexual misconduct accusations about someone.

“This is Ronan at his most manipulative,” Lauer wrote, accusing him of an “attempt to manipulate readers into believing there were seven allegations relating to me. There were not.”

He also claims Farrow looks no further into these allegations, whoever they were against.

In response on Tuesday, Farrow tweeted: “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 day before, in response to the NYT op-ed, he also tweeted “I stand by my reporting”, as well as retweeting the lengthy response by New Yorker Editor Michael Luo, who also defended Farrow’s reporting.

The publisher of “Catch and Kill”, Little, Brown and Company, told Fox News: “Ronan’s dedication to a deep and thorough fact-check of his reporting, his commitment to the rights of victims and his impeccable attention to detail and nuance make us proud to be his publisher.”

Nevils accused Lauer of anally raping her in his hotel room in Sochi while they were covering the 2014 Winter Olympics. While she admitted having further sexual encounters with him, she described them as “transactional”, and only occurring because he had control over her career.

In his book, Farrow alleges that NBC — his former employer — were blackmailed into killing his expose on Harvey Weinstein, who had knowledge of Lauer’s alleged misconduct.