NEW YORK • Was former NBC News reporter Ronan Farrow impeded in his bid to nail Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein?

On Monday, NBC News chairman Andrew Lack waded into the matter for the first time.

In an e-mail to staff, he defended how the news division conducted itself last year when Mr Farrow and producer Rich McHugh pursued a story on sexual misconduct allegations against Weinstein.

His e-mail came nearly 10 months after Mr Farrow's findings were published by The New Yorker. His work earned the magazine a Pulitzer Prize in public service, an award it shared with The New York Times.

Attached to Mr Lack's note was an internal document. NBC said not one of Weinstein's accusers, who had been interviewed for the story, had agreed to speak on the record by the time network executives reached an impasse with Mr Farrow in late summer of last year.

It also detailed what NBC said were all the encounters between its news executives and Weinstein and his representatives, all of which Mr Lack said amounted to nothing.

In the internal document, NBC said Mr Farrow had asked to move his reporting to a magazine and that he had been given permission.

"Immediately after," Mr Lack wrote, Mr Farrow asked to use an NBC camera crew to conduct an interview with a potential source - a request that the network denied.

Mr Lack said the interview did not proceed because Mr Farrow had already asked to leave the network.

NYTIMES