Ronan Farrow Joins MSNBC

Ronan Farrow, the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, has officially joined MSNBC.

Farrow will host a weekday program on the network beginning early next year. He told The Hollywood Reporter that his desire to join a television network came from conversations he had with young people who are frustrated with the state of TV news programs.

“I think what people crave is more involvement in the story,” the Yale Law graduate said. “There has been a democratization of information. But what they still crave, and what I crave as a TV viewer, is a guide on how people can have agency in the story. And this show is all about empowering people to do that. People want a return to real democracy. They want to respond to these events [in Washington] that there is so much frustration about.”

MSNBC president Phil Griffin said it was Farrow’s originality that sealed the deal.

“Within 20 minutes I just knew that he had a certain presence and confidence. He knew what he wanted to say,” Griffin said. “I just had a sense that the guy could do it. Whatever that thing is that enables people to communicate really well, he had it. We’re always trying evolve the message here and how to get ideas across. And he was an original thinker. And that’s the most important thing.”

The program will likely launch in mid-January, according to THR.

Ronan Farrow joined the Obama administration in 2009 as Special Adviser for Humanitarian and NGO Affairs in the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and was responsible for overseeing the US government’s relationship with “civil society and nongovernmental actors” in those countries. In 2011, Farrow was appointed as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Special Adviser for Global Youth Issues and Director of the State Department’s Office of Global Youth Issues. He concluded the term in 2012 and began a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford University.

Ronan Farrow, who was the youngest Bard College graduate ever at 15, recently made headlines after Mia Farrow said there was a possibility ex-husband Frank Sinatra was the 25-year-old’s father. Sinatra’s widow, Barbara, called the paternity claim “a bunch of junk.” Farrow joked about his mother’s claim, writing on Twitter, “Listen, we’re all *possibly* Frank Sinatra’s son.”

[Photo credit: Norway UN (New York) / Flickr]