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1-Page Summary of Catch and Kill

Overview

In 2017, Ronan Farrow was on a TV investigation when he found out that Harvey Weinstein had been accused of sexual assault. This wasn’t the first time this happened, but it was finally being addressed in public.

Weinstein was always surrounded by rumors of sexual impropriety. Journalists tried to get the truth, but they couldn’t because Weinstein had powerful friends who could make problems go away.

Over the next year, Farrow would find out just how deep the rabbit hole went. He was dogged by Weinstein’s lawyers and undermined by his employers. However, he had one thing previous reporters did not have: trust of Weinstein’s victims.

In this article, we’ll explore the story of how an NBC journalist tried to uncover Hollywood’s most notorious predator. We’ll learn why it took so long for the victims to come forward and how they were silenced by Harvey Weinstein.

Big Idea #1: NBC’s response to a scandal involving one of its hosts was the first sign it was uncomfortable reporting on sexual abuse.

In October 2016, the Washington Post released a video that showed presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women. The video was filmed in 2005 and appeared on Access Hollywood.

A scandal was revealed in the Washington Post, which could have changed the outcome of the presidential election. NBC had recorded Trump making offensive comments about women and Billy Bush, another presenter on Access Hollywood, also made some offensive remarks. The video was leaked to NBC’s parent company and it chose not to air all of what happened because it wanted to protect its own employees who were involved in that situation.

It wasn’t just that the tape was released, but how long it took NBC to release it. It’s clear they had known about the tapes for a while before releasing them and were concerned about what else might be out there.

Ronan Farrow, a young reporter at NBC News, had just finished an investigative piece on colleges botching sexual assault investigations. He was frustrated because his superiors were blocking it from airing.

The problem became clear when Farrow looked at the programming schedule. He was supposed to address sexual assault but Bush’s apology would air during that time. It didn’t seem right, so he decided to deal with it head-on or make the problem go away.

NBCUniversal chose to ignore Farrow’s report and ran a spot on Adderall abuse instead. Farrow asked his producer if NBC was afraid of broadcasting sexual assault stories, and his producer said yes.

Big Idea #2: Farrow began investigating a Hollywood studio head after an actress alleged that she’d been raped.

The Access Hollywood tape sparked outrage, but the problem was already in place. It was just one of many cases where powerful men were accused of sexually assaulting women. The Bill Cosby controversy resurfaced in 2014 and then Fox News personality Gretchen Carlson filed a sexual harassment suit against Roger Ailes in July 2016.

In early 2017, millions of women marched in cities across the United States. They held sit-ins and chanted slogans that were similar to Trump’s language. For example, they claimed that “pussy grabs back.” Meanwhile, Vox journalist Liz Plank asked why #WomenDontReport on social media.

On Twitter, actress Rose McGowan answered Plank’s question. She said when she first reported being raped by a studio head, a female law attorney told her no one would take her seriously because she had shot a sex scene in one of her films.

The lawyer was correct. The actress was treated badly by the media, and she lost movie offers because of it. Her allegations were an open secret in Hollywood, so other women knew that if they reported their abuse, they would suffer consequences as well. Meanwhile, her rapist continued to be successful in Hollywood.