Catch and Kill

by Ronan Farrow
Scott County Library hardcover 419 pages
genre: investigative reporting

Wow. How interesting that I'm finishing this book just as Matt Lauer spoke out in a "scathing op-ed" to say that Farrow did not do an accurate job of reporting (May 21, 2020). I had started this book earlier in the winter but did not read quickly enough and had to return it to the library. To me, it seems Farrow did an incredibly thorough job vetting his sources. His documentation covers several pages at the end of the book. The patterns of sexual predation by Harvey Weinstein and the money / power to hush up wrongdoing are so saddening.

Page 167 - "Canosa wasn't sure what to do. She had signed a nondisclosure agreement as a condition of her employment with Weinstein. She was still trying to make it as a producer, and was terrified of retaliation. Weinstein could render her unemployable. And then there were the hesitations of any survivor of sexual violence. She'd allowed her wounds to calcify and learned to carry on. She hadn't told her father, or her boyfriend. 'I don't want to suffer more. You know?' she told me. Once, as she'd worked up the nerve to raise the matter with a therapist, 'I saw her at a premier for a Weinstein movie,' Canosa told me. 'I found out she was a producer on one of Harvey's movies.'"

I cannot begin to imagine the shame, pain, anger, and fear that this woman and so many others experienced. For all the amazing movies he has had a hand in making, he absolutely destroyed human beings for his own personal power trip. Over and over again, the reports of his behavior disgusted and horrified me. What an awful man.

Page 240 - "Sorvino decided she'd help and, over the course of several calls, went fully on the record. But the fear in her voice never left. 'When people go up against power brokers there is punishment,' she said. I realized her anxieties went beyond career considerations. She asked if I had security, if I'd thought about the risk of disappearing, of an 'accident' befalling me. I said I was fine, that I was taking precautions, then wondered what precautions I was actually taking, other than glancing over my shoulder a lot."

The whole surveillance / spying angle also blew me away. If you're doing so many awful things that you need to pay out money for lawyers, detectives, fake operatives to mine information from victims, payments to victims to keep them quiet, etc. . . . perhaps you should think about changing your own behavior! Trump almost looks like a nice man in comparison to Weinstein! The fact that our president has also paid out money to keep women quiet for his sexual liaisons just makes me sad.

Page 241 - "Weinstein told her that she was making a huge mistake by rejecting him, and named an actress and a model who he claimed had given in to his sexual overtures and whose careers he said he had advanced as a result. Arquette said she responded, 'I'll never be that girl,' and left. Arquette's story was important because of how closely it hewed to others I'd heard: professional pretext, meeting moved upstairs, hotel room, request for massage, bathrobe."

Gross. What a disgusting, awful man. I'm so sorry this story didn't break fifteen years earlier with the reporting that Ken Auletta had done on Weinstein. I'm sorry that some media power brokers are okay with the idea of "catch and kill" - paying top dollar for a story to make sure they have exclusive rights and then never publishing it. I'm sorry that evil is so prevalent in our world.

Page 254 - "Other industry veterans I spoke with sounded a different note. Weinstein's predation was an open secret, they said, and if they hadn't seen it, they'd heard about at least some of it. Susan Sarandon, the kind of ethical futurist who had stubbornly refused to work with accused predators for years, gamely brainstormed leads. She let out a cackle when I told her what I was up to. 'Oh, Ronan,' she said, going into a teasing, singsong delivery. Not mocking, just delighting at the impending drama about to befall me. 'You're gonna be in trouble.'"

The fact that so many people knew Weinstein was preying on these young women and yet stayed silent . . . makes me think of Edmund Burke. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” 

Page 414 - "'You know, the press is as much part of our democracy as Congress or the executive branch or the judicial branch. It has to keep things in check. And when the powerful control the press, or make the press useless, if the people can't trust the press, the people lose. And the powerful can do what they want." 

Igor Ostrovskiy was one of the people  who was hired to tail Ronan Farrow as he was investigating this story. As he realized what was going on, he decided to meet privately with Farrow to share information. He ended up starting his own private investigation business after Black Cube stopped sending him work. As an immigrant with a new baby (born in America), his perspective was seasoned by his earlier life in Ukraine. "Coming from a society where the news was controlled by those in power, I never, ever want to allow this to happen to the country that gave me and my wife and my son a chance." Powerful words.

This book is a powerful and worthwhile read.