NBC News’ Noah Oppenheim, Accused of Downplaying Lauer Rape Claims, Once Bashed NBC for Firing Marv Albert


NBC News’ Noah Oppenheim, Accused of Downplaying Lauer Rape Claims, Once Bashed NBC for Firing Marv Albert

A top NBC executive already under fire over an accusation he downplayed a rape accusation against Matt Lauer is catching more flak over columns he wrote at Harvard University that mocked feminists, gushed over busty blondes, and lambasted NBC for firing a sportscaster accused of sexual assault.

Copies of the 20-year-old columns by NBC News President Noah Oppenheim have started to circulate at the network, which was roiled this week by the release of excerpts of a new book by ex-correspondent Ronan Farrow.

Staffers were particularly infuriated by Farrow’s allegation that after Lauer was fired over an anal-rape claim by a junior employee, the accuser learned that Oppenheim, along with NBC chairman Andrew Lack, had been “emphasizing that the incident hadn’t been ‘criminal’ or an ‘assault.’”

Oppenheim was confronted by employees during a conference call on Thursday morning. Now he’ll likely face new questions about his writings in the Harvard Crimson.

Twenty years before the Lauer accusations emerged, while Oppenheim was a student at Harvard University, he wrote a Crimson column railing against NBC’s decision to fire Marv Albert after the sportscaster pleaded guilty to assault in a sex case. (Albert was later re-hired in 2000). 

“The trial was a sham and that the network’s action was an injustice,” Oppenheim fumed in the October 1997 column. He lamented how Albert’s accuser, Vanessa Perhach, was “permitted to remain shielded in anonymity” while Albert’s sex life faced public probing. Perhach accused the sportscaster of throwing her on a hotel bed, biting her, and forcing her to perform oral sex on him. 

“It is certainly a noble goal to protect the victims of sexual assault from mistreatment in the courtroom,” Oppenheim wrote, “but why should Marv’s past conduct have been subject to the closest scrutiny, while Perhach’s character history have remained off-limits?”


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