Ronan Farrow Being Allowed to Kill Woody Allen’s Book Deal is Absurd, Hypocritical, and Dangerous

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In a sequence of events which was, paradoxically, as outrageously stunning as it was easily predictable, Hachette Books, which had planned to publish filmmaker Woody Allen’s memoir, has caved under pressure and killed the deal. This firestorm was seemingly sparked by a tweet from author Ronan Farrow, Allen’s estranged son, who objected to the publisher of his most recent book agreeing to do the same for the person he believes sexually abused his adopted sister Dylan, back when they were both young children in 1992.

The key moment in Hachette backing out of their agreement to publish a work of extreme public interest, came when, in direct reaction to Farrow’s tweet, much of their staff walked out of their primary office in protest. While their loyalty to one of their most well-known authors in understandable, this act was in direct contradiction to many of the fundamental principles of their chosen calling.

Imagine devoting your career to the publication of books, the last legitimate mainstream medium where the concepts of free speech and hearing both sides of even controversial stories are still supposedly valued and protected, and then taking part in a demonstration to STOP a legitimate work from being printed. In the not-too-distant-past, such an immature act of insubordination would have resulted, at best, in no change to the book’s publication, and, at worst, the termination of those who publicly embarrassed the company, and betrayed much of what book publishing used to be about.

Instead, in today’s upside-down world, these intellectual terrorists got exactly what they wanted, and several horrendous new precedents have been set. The virtue-signaling inmates are now running the media’s politically correct asylum.

Rank hypocrisy pervades nearly everyone’s reaction to this situation, but with no one more so than Farrow himself. After all, this was the man who has constantly bitterly complained that NBC refused to disseminate his now famous investigation into Harvey Weinstein, and who is now, without even a hint of self-awareness, using Weinstein’s own bullying tactics to successfully intimidate a publisher into not running with a book that he hasn’t even read (even after what had to have been a deliberative decision made at the very top of the company).

All this should all be troubling enough, but the absurdity of these dangerous circumstances hardly stop there. Farrow’s very obvious emotional investment in the allegation against Allen creates a massive conflict of interest which should completely disqualify him from having any say at all in the publishing of this book (if he wanted to refute it once it came out, as we used to do when adults disagreed with things that are said publicly, I am quite confident that his adoring fans in the news media would be more than happy to give him a giant platform with which to do so).

After all, Farrow has the last name of his mother Mia Farrow, who was embroiled in a nasty marital battle with his father when he was a very young boy, just before she came forward with the allegation that Allen abused their adopted daughter. There is a very solid argument to be made that Allen, who was never even arrested in connection to this accusation, is actually innocent, but there is an even stronger one that this traumatic episode has made Ronan Farrow, as it would have with any normal human, incapable of being truly objective about this situation, or even the entire subject of sexual abuse in general.

Even before this Woody Allen episode, which has now given Farrow the authority of a king, it was particularly disturbing that he had somehow been effectively granted, by the rest of the media, the incredible power of being the arbiter of all truth when it comes to allegations of sexual abuse. While I had accepted his Weinstein work must be credible (Weinstein was recently convicted at trial on two lesser charges, and found not guilty on the most egregious allegations), I found his efforts to jump on the liberal bandwagon against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to be extremely suspect.

But it wasn’t until I got very deeply involved in the allegation of rape against former Today Show host Matt Lauer, made public as part of the rollout for Farrow’s latest book, that there was real reason to question whether his journalism even passes the basic standards of a tabloid writer. Farrow being unwilling to answer any of my questions about his reporting on Lauer, combined with him now going to great lengths to prevent Woody Allen’s version of events (which, to be clear, we don’t even know if this subject was even to be in his now unpublished book) from becoming public, is far more consistent with an activist who is invested in a narrative, than a journalist who just wants all the facts to be known, regardless of where they may lead.

As for Lauer, there is a very good chance that you will soon be learning much more about why Farrow’s reporting may not be nearly as unimpeachable as the majority of the news media pretends it to be. In my opinion, we will eventually learn that Farrow’s crusade against NBC has skewed his objectivity on this subject in much the same way that his relationships with his mother and sister have impacted his perception of the allegation against his father.

Farrow’s ability to censor the book of a famous person who was accused of something almost thirty years ago, with just a single tweet, is a new low in the “Salem-ification” of how the modern news media handles allegations of sexual abuse. The accused are to be silenced — even if, like Allen, they are never even arrested — while almost everyone else in the news media either cheers, or looks the other way, terrified that the #MeToo mob will come after them next for having committed the blasphemy of supporting an accused person’s right to provide their version of events.

We are already living in very dangerous times, but Ronan Farrow is being allowed by the rest of the media (with few exceptions) to make things even more precarious in the future.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.