Ronan Farrow has officially had it with the Internet’s detective work, and he’s here to clear up the chaos surrounding a totally random, completely false rumor tying him to the New York Times’ reporting on the Blake Lively vs. Justin Baldoni drama.
Let’s rewind: Last year, Blake Lively filed a legal complaint against her It Ends With Us co-star/director, accusing him of sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign against her. In response, Baldoni went full courtroom drama and hit the New York Times with a $250 million libel lawsuit, claiming they had taken things out of context and made him look bad.
Enter the Internet, which decided that Ronan Farrow was somehow behind the whole thing—because, obviously, he has a rumored connection to Taylor Swift, who happens to be friends with Blake. Makes total sense, right?
Well, Ronan saw this messy game of telephone and decided to set the record straight—because, shockingly, he does not actually moonlight as the New York Times’ secret overlord.
When an Instagram user asked why he was “taking down” Justin Baldoni, Ronan basically sighed through his keyboard and replied, “No—I don’t write for The New York Times, have nothing to do with this case, and wasn’t even lurking in the background with a notepad. I write for The New Yorker (a completely different publication, folks), and if I were investigating this, you’d see my work there. Please, I beg you, check your sources before going full conspiracy theorist.”
But wait—there’s more! Because apparently, one short clarification wasn’t enough for the Internet, Ronan followed up with a much longer statement that can be summed up as: “This is nonsense, and I do not have the patience for it.”
He explained that the supposed “connections” linking him to the story were just… him hanging out with a friend (allegedly Taylor Swift), and that they never even discussed the case. He also noted that he’s been the target of plenty of smear campaigns himself, so he knows a wild accusation when he sees one.
Ronan then laid down some hard truths about the state of journalism, saying that, unlike what Twitter conspiracies might suggest, he does not wake up every morning with a personal vendetta against Hollywood stars. He reports on actual major systemic issues, not celebrity gossip. And unless something mind-blowingly urgent about Lively or Baldoni comes up, he’s kind of busy tackling, you know, national security threats.
He wrapped things up with an important PSA: The Internet loves drama, and people should really take a deep breath before believing everything they read. Fact-checking is not a lost art!
Ronan Farrow is not the puppet master behind this story, he does not work for the New York Times, and if anyone needs him, he’ll be over at The New Yorker, actually reporting on things that matter.
