"Because if you scratch at Mr. Farrow’s reporting... you start to see some shakiness at its foundation. He delivers narratives that are irresistibly cinematic..."

"... with unmistakable heroes and villains — and often omits the complicating facts and inconvenient details that may make them less dramatic. At times, he does not always follow the typical journalistic imperatives of corroboration and rigorous disclosure, or he suggests conspiracies that are tantalizing but he cannot prove. Mr. Farrow, 32, is not a fabulist. His reporting can be misleading but he does not make things up. His work, though, reveals the weakness of a kind of resistance journalism that has thrived in the age of Donald Trump: That if reporters swim ably along with the tides of social media and produce damaging reporting about public figures most disliked by the loudest voices, the old rules of fairness and open-mindedness can seem more like impediments than essential journalistic imperatives.... It’s hard to feel much sympathy for a predator like [Harvey] Weinstein or to shed tears over [Matt] Lauer’s firing. And readers may brush aside these reporting issues as the understandable desire of a zealous young reporter to tell his stories as dramatically as he can...."

From "Is Ronan Farrow Too Good to Be True?/He has delivered revelatory reporting on some of the defining stories of our time. But a close examination reveals the weaknesses in what may be called an era of resistance journalism" by Ben Smith (NYT).

A long article. Much more to read. Check it out. But I will tell you that one thing that is not discussed is Ronan Farrow's treatment of his (presumed) father Woody Allen, notably his work suppressing Woody's autobiography. The censorship of a viewpoint in somebody else's book is worse than the omission of "complicating facts and inconvenient details" in your own reporting. Where is the true spirit of journalism?

IN THE COMMENTS: Dave Begley said: "Ronan must have something coming on Biden. That's why the NYT is attacking now."