NBC’s embattled news chief is being haunted by a series of old articles he wrote as a student — mocking feminists, bragging about objectifying women and even questioning the firing of a sex attacker at the network he would eventually lead.
Staffers at the network have started passing around articles Noah Oppenheim wrote at Harvard 20 years ago, ones that have made them question his attitude toward women, according to the Daily Beast.
“Noah has always run a boys’ club,” one person who has worked closely with him complained to the site.
Another NBC staffer said that one column made them want to quit.
“Our boss thinks women enjoy being ‘confined, pumped with alcohol and preyed upon’ — those are his own words — and now he runs one of the largest news divisions in America,” the staffer told the Daily Beast.
“I can’t believe I work for him. How can this person be president of a network news division?”
His writings in the late 1990s for the Harvard Crimson include at least one where he groused about female students wanting protected spaces because of sexual harassment and assaults.
“It may be time for the feminist activists on this campus to take a little time-out for a good old-fashioned reality check,” Oppenheim wrote.
In another, he bragged about his love for Hooters and the pictures of scantily clad women that decorated his room.
“By the standards of modern feminism, I am thereby guilty of a most terrible crime. I objectify women,” he wrote.
“Like most heterosexual men, the sight of a big-busted blonde tickles my fancy.”
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Oppenheim also attacked NBC for firing sportscaster Marv Albert after he pleaded guilty to assault in a sex case — years before finding himself at the center of a similar scandal at the same network.
“The trial was a sham and that the network’s action was an injustice,” Oppenheim complained in the October 1997 column, complaining that Albert’s accuser was “permitted to remain shielded in anonymity.”
“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 [her] character history have remained off-limits?”
Oppenheim reckoned NBC’s actions were “highly inappropriate” and that the sportscaster had been “subjected to an unnecessary parade of humiliations.”
“All that we know for sure is that Marv liked his sex a little kinky,” he wrote.
During a heated meeting this week, Oppenheim was grilled about the network’s handling of the Matt Lauer rape allegation, Page Six reported. He’s also battling claims the network tried to shut down Ronan Farrow’s exposé of Harvey Weinstein.
Oppenheim started working for NBC after graduating from Harvard in 2000, climbing the ranks until he was named president of NBC News in 2017.
NBC did not respond to multiple requests for comment, the Daily Beast said.
