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Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill has been making headlines for the past two weeks. The book is about Farrow’s years-long investigation into Harvey Weinstein and how NBC shut down the story while Farrow worked there, which is how his Weinstein series ended up being published by The New Yorker. So, in addition to all of the information about Harvey Weinstein, Catch and Kill deals a lot with the toxic culture of NBC and how they were killing stories about predators while allowing Matt Lauer to harass and assault NBC employees. There’s a lot of insider-y sh-t but in general, I believe Ronan Farrow and I believe the atmosphere in and around NBC was probably the f–king worst. In the middle of all of that, there was this weird little story too: Gwen Stefani is pro-vaccine but she didn’t want people to know she was pro-vaccine?

MSNBC president Phil Griffin tried to pressure journalist Ronan Farrow into editing an interview with singer Gwen Stefani to tone down comments she made about vaccines, his new book alleges. Farrow spoke to the No Doubt frontwoman at the Global Citizen Festival in 2014 regarding the festival’s goal to promote vaccination amid the growing anti-vaxxer movement, according to the journalist’s new book “Catch and Kill.”

“I asked Gwen Stefani if she vaccinated her kids, and how she felt about anti-vaxxers,” he wrote. “She said she supported vaccines and advised people to talk to their doctors.”

But while editing the segment, he received a call from a producer at MSNBC, which aired the festival, claiming that Stefani’s camp reviewed the transcript and requested edits. Farrow — who demanded to know who leaked his transcript — refused to make the changes, which led to a meeting with Griffin, according to the book.

“It’s a puff piece! Come on. What the f—k?” Griffin allegedly grumbled. Farrow claimed that Griffin went on to insist that No Doubt would sever ties with the charity festival. “You know what happens if we don’t make these edits?” Griffin said. “Stefani’s threatening to pull out! That’s straight from her manager.”

Farrow said he eventually relented and aired a 5-minute clip of small talk with the singer. It wasn’t clear why Stefani’s team allegedly wanted the comments cut.

[From Page Six]

There’s no record of Gwen Stefani ever being an anti-Vaxxer or having anti-Vaxx sympathies. And by 2014, the anti-Vaxx movement had largely been discredited, so it wasn’t like Gwen would have been the sole voice out there saying “vaccinate your children.” So… did Gwen really demand the edit, or was it some weird corporate thing which ended up being blamed on Gwen? Did NBC decide to get into bed with anti-Vaxxers and Gwen was the fall guy? I have no idea. But it’s a really weird story.

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