Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
Ronan Farrow
Genre(s) | Nonfiction, True Crime
Goodreads Rating | 4.52
Humpo Show Rating | 4.50
Published: 2019
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Catch and Kill is a story about much more than the Harvey Weinstein scandal. It is an account of how a major network, in multiple ways, put obstacles in the path of a journalist who wished to tell a controversial tale that had been thwarted many times for several other journalists.
Farrow, accompanied for much of his investigations by Rich McHugh, admirably embarked on his investigation into Weinstein with the utmost persistence – a trait that is tested time and time again. His journey to uncovering and making the public aware of Weinstein’s decades of predatory sexual assault and harassment against the women he worked with in the industry is ultimately successful, but the amount of people who were working as double agents and attempting to cover-up Weinstein’s crimes is unbelievable.
The film producer – one of the biggest names in the business – seemed to be friend’s with everyone, or at least know something about them that kept them in check, include the editor of The Enquirer, among other media companies. Furthermore, there was also the assumption that he was just too powerful to touch. Everyone around him looked the other way and let him get away with what he was doing, including his lawyer Lisa Bloom. NBC bosses Andrew Lack and Noah Oppenheim and countless others that allowed for his predatory behaviour towards women, especially those just starting out in the industry.
Farrow follows up on the Weinstein case with chasing many other offenders in the industry who had abused their power and used it to silence their victims through non-disclosure agreements and payoffs. He does a great service to all the women that come forward (not only for the Weistein case, but for others too), documenting all the resistance he and they encountered with lawyers, media companies, secret services and Farrow’s bosses at NBC, which buried the Weinstein story.
Farrow’s Catch and Kill is an excellently researched and fact-checked account of his investigations into Harvey Weinstein and the cover up that surrounded the executives at NBC and their Comcast overlords. Farrow goes further and shows that the disgraced film producer was not an isolated case, but one of many offenders in an industry where men had abused their power for many years. This is my first foray into reading an investigative reporting book… and it certainly won’t be the last if I find any more that tell a complicated story in such a crisp manner.
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