Talk:Andrew Lack (executive)

Declaring COI
I created this article's first draft, which I submitted via WP:AFC. It was reviewed and published by an editor there. I have a WP:COI as a paid consultant to NBC. While I am a frequent Wikipedia contributor, and try to always abide by the five pillars, I will not do direct edits on this article because of my conflict of interest. Instead, I will submit suggestions here. I am also always happy to do further research and writing if anyone has ideas they'd like me to look into further. BC1278 (talk) 22:46, 2 August 2016 (UTC)BC1278

Remove false statement
I have a WP COI, as disclosed above or I would do this myself, as it's clear cut

The following statement in the section, NBC News (2015-present), already properly removed once as "gossip" and coatrack, was restored by the same almost single purpose IP address. It should be removed again. The statement is false. Kelly is still an employee of NBC as of now. It incorrectly summarizes the source, which reports on rumors of possible future events. Even if it was accurately summarized, it would violate WP: CRYSTAL BALL. And based on her three-year contract, news media is reporting that any separation in the future will be a negotiated settlement, not a firing. So the statement will remain false in the future. The subject of Kelly's tenure at NBC can be revisited for this article, with a reliable source, when events are in the past, not the future.


 * "Kelly's tenure on NBC was short-lived, as she was dismissed just short of two years on the air following controversial remarks on the nature of blackface."

BC1278 (talk) 17:19, 26 October 2018 (UTC)BC1278

Reply 26-OCT-2018
Regards,  Spintendo   23:25, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * The claim appears to be referenced, however, the claim was modified slightly to indicate that it was Business Insider who was reporting these changes. If the claim is later proven to be false, please resubmit the edit request.

Removed Vandalism
I have a COI, as disclosed above. I removed the words "A Trump hater" as the first words of the first sentence of this article. Unsourced, clear-cut NPOV violation. Removing this sort of inflammatory vandalism on a BLP falls within permissible exceptions to WP:COI restrictions. BC1278 (talk) 18:54, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Missing context
I'm disappointed that this article, because it omits how Lack's changes in the programming at MSNBC harmed that channel. There is no mention about how he systematically removed its liberal commentators & replaced them with conservative ones -- despite that the channel had increased its ratings because of that POV. That he did so is evident if you compare the timelines of this article with the one at MSNBC. He took over in 2015; that year "nearly all daytime opinionated news programs were replaced with more generic news programs. Ronan Farrow, Joy-Ann Reid, Krystal Ball, Touré, Abby Huntsman, Alex Wagner, Ed Schultz, and Al Sharpton lost their shows." All this article notes is that "ratings increased", based on an article behind a paywall. (As if increased ratings justifies everything.) It also omits all mention of the controversy around how Lawrence O'Donnell was pressured to leave MSNBC in 2017,"Lawrence O’Donnell’s Future At MSNBC Is Unclear" sparking a MoveOn petition to keep O'Donnell."Save Lawrence O'Donnell's Show, 'The Last Word'!!!!!" And Daily Beast has an article -- "NBC Shakeup May Spell the End for Ronan Farrow Nemesis Noah Oppenheim" -- that documents many problems in Lack's management of the NBC News division.As I looked at related articles in writing this criticism, I found numerous instances where controversies had been quietly overlooked, making conservative news sources look moderate & respectable, while making liberal/progressive ones look foolish & hypocritical. There is a depressing amount of whitewashing going on in Wikipedia. -- llywrch (talk) 22:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Inaccuracies re: Farrow reporting
I'd like to continue the archived discussion at Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive337 since there are still inaccuracies about the Weinstein sentences that were not addressed before archiving. I have a COI, as a paid consultant of NBC News.

First, thank you to editors for giving their time to this and for correcting the issues with WP:DUE. The new language is an improvement but one sentence is unequivocally an inaccurate summarization of both the source (Variety) (and more to the point, the book, Catch and Kill, which is what this Variety story is about.) The sentence in question on Wikipedia reads:

Farrow also alleged that Lack had ordered Richard Greenberg to block reporting on the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse cases.

Here is what it says, in full, in Variety:

The book paints NBC News executives as obstructive in his Weinstein investigation. As Farrow amassed his reporting about Weinstein, Oppenheim asked him, “Like, is this really worth it?” and suggested no one knows who Weinstein is. Farrow was eventually told to stop reporting the story, because it was under review at NBC Universal. “This is a Steve Burke decision. It’s an Andy decision,” Farrow recalls Richard Greenberg, the head of NBC News’ investigative unit, telling him. Since he didn’t believe NBC would ever run his story, he took it to the New Yorker, where it was published in October 2017.

This sentence simple does not say Greenberg was given orders by Lack. Farrow is using Greenberg as a source of information here, not to say he was the person who blocked Farrow's reporting. Or that Lack ordered him to do anything. This sentence drags in Rich Greenberg in a no way no suggested by Variety. The actual allegation from Variety is already conveyed in the previous sentence in the Wikipedia article: "Farrow, in his book Catch and Kill, also accused Lack of slowing and eventually blocking Farrow’s seven month investigation into Harvey Weinstein."

But regarding this sentence, it's accurate except that it is a severe mischaracterization of the book to single out only Lack -- the reader is give the false impression that Farrow alleges Lack did this all by himself. Farrow's allegation is that it was Lack, Steve Burke and Noah Oppenheim who slowed or obstructed him. All three should be in the Wikipedia sentence. Variety is explicit in this paragraph that Farrow blames all three in his book. BC1278 (talk) 19:59, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

Discussion on Lauer incident
and others, as a separate follow up to the archived discussion at Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard/Archive337, the paragraph combining existing elements from the Lack article starts off with outrageously inaccurate statements about the timing of the firing of Matt Lauer. I am opening this discussion although I could just remove the sentences immediately under WP:LIBEL, despite my disclosed COI as a paid consultant to NBC News. Here are the sentences:

In 2019, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow claimed that Lack downplayed a human resources complaint of rape against Today anchor Matt Lauer in 2014. Lauer was not fired until late 2017.

In fact, the incident happened in 2014 but the HR complaint was not filed until 2017. Lauer was fired 24-hours later.

According to the cited |Variety source (which summarizes "Catch and Kill") the alleged rape took place in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics. The employee continued to have sexual encounters with Lauer after the 2014 Olympics, saying she was "she was terrified about the control Lauer had over her career" and the ongoing encounters were "transactional." She says she confided in other people at NBC but she did not go to the human resources department.

These false statements saying Farrow alleged a three year gap from the HR complaint to Lauer's firing need to be removed from Wikipedia ASAP. BC1278 (talk) 21:41, 6 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I probably won't be able to look into any of this for a few days, just letting you know I see it. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:11, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * The edits were done by @Animalparty, and I belive they did them in good faith, so I oppose any change to the paragraph. Quetstar (talk) 22:30, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Just because something is written in good faith does not mean it cannot be improved. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:46, 6 May 2022 (UTC)
 * I know, I was just stating my opinion. Quetstar (talk) 00:50, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * It looks clear enough to me: the source cited says that Farrow contacted NBC Universal human resources in 2017. Not 2014. Our article was wrong. I've removed the dates entirely for now, though we may expand on this later. Are there other sources covering this that could clarify the timeline? AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:31, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Not to my knowledge. Quetstar (talk) 02:01, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Can we further discuss the very serious mistake and ommissions in the sentence concerning Lauer in the NBCUniversal (2015-2020) subsection of the Career section?

This is the sentence that is problematic:

In 2019, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow claimed that Lack downplayed a human resources complaint of rape against Today anchor Matt Lauer.

To include this complex, highly controversial event accurately on Wikipedia, the nuances should be detailed.

1) The article should state that Lack fired Lauer almost immediately after the HR complaint. (The HR complaint was made on a Monday; the announcement of firing was made two days later.) On the day of the firing, the then anonymous employee’s spokesperson and lawyer praised NBC for acting so swiftly.   The speed with which NBC fired Lauer after the HR complaint was a prominent part of the reporting at the time.

2) The allegation in the 2017 HR complaint was “inappropriate sexual behavior”, according to press accounts. The day of the firing, the unnamed victim’s lawyer and spokesperson characterized the incident as “sexual misconduct.” Wikipedia states that the 2017 HR complaint alleged “rape.” None of the contemporaneous reporting describing the HR complaint (statements by her spokesperson or by NBC) said the HR complaint alleged rape.   Wikipedia should not characterize the 2017 HR complaint as a rape, which is contrary to all the press coverage. This is a serious mistake and needs to be corrected. Two years after the HR complaint, Brooke Nevils, the employee, went public in a book by Ronan Farrow, and said that she had been raped by Lauer at the Sochi Olympics. The 2019 allegation of rape was one of the headline news items that came from the 2019 book, as evidenced by this Variety story."Ronan Farrow Book Alleges Matt Lauer Raped NBC News Colleague", ''[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]

3) Another allegation, as reported in a Variety article summarizing a book by Ronan Farrow, is that in 2017, the employee heard that after Lauer was fired, Lack said that the Sochi incident was not criminal or an assault. This made her feel physically sick. But the Variety source does not say Lack downplayed the HR complaint itself. Wikipedia needs to be careful not to say the 2017 HR complaint contained an allegation actually made in 2019 in Farrow’s book.

Here is a proposed replacement as a discussion starting point:

On November 29, 2017, Lack sent a memo to NBC employees announcing that NBC had fired Today anchor Matt Lauer following a November 27, 2017 HR complaint by a then-unnamed NBC employee alleging “inappropriate sexual behavior” by Lauer. Lack said in that memo that NBC had been “presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident”. The NBC employee’s lawyer said that “NBC acted quickly, as all companies should, when confronted with credible allegations of sexual misconduct in the workplace.” In a 2019 book, Brooke Nevils said that she was the employee and alleged that Lauer had, in fact, raped her; Lauer has denied the allegation. Several weeks after Lauer was fired by Lack in 2017, Nevils said she felt sick upon hearing that after firing Lauer, Lack had told some that the Lauer allegations hadn’t been ‘criminal’ or an ‘assault’. Nevils continued to have sexual encounters with Lauer after Sochi, which she said she felt pressures into out of career concerns.

Here is the passage from the Variety article used as the source on Wikipedia:

BC1278 (talk) 17:40, 3 October 2022 (UTC)


 * I see no issues at all, so i don't think it should be discussed any further. Quetstar (talk) 20:50, 3 October 2022 (UTC)
 * Lack fired Lauer two days after the complaint. He didn't downplay it, as Wikipedia says. That would be one huge mistake. The other would be that the HR complaint was for "sexual misconduct", not rape, according to the press. That's another huge mistake. Wikipedia needs to correct mistakes even if they were made in good faith. BC1278 (talk) 19:32, 5 October 2022 (UTC)
 * While I see that the HR complaint was for "inappropriate sexual behavior", that behavior could have been rape, so no nuances or corrections are necessary. Furthermore, it seems like Lack and Oppenheim deempasized the seriousness of the matter by saying it was not criminal nor an assault. so the sentence is appropriate whether you like it or not. Quetstar (talk) 23:21, 5 October 2022 (UTC)