When NBC News hired Ronan Farrow in 2014, it welcomed him not as a Rhodes scholar or Yale Law School graduate but as a telegenic Hollywood insider with a Golden Globe-winning mother and either an Oscar- or a Grammy-winning father. But by October 2017, when he published his blockbuster exposé of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein in the New Yorker, Farrow had vanquished not only the city that built him, but the network, NBC, that was supposed to hold Hollywood to account.
Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, documents his three-year odyssey to take down Weinstein, a serial sexual predator. But Farrow conquers Weinstein with more than 100 pages left to go. He spends the rest of the book exposing the cabal of villains at NBC who, by attempting to thwart Farrow’s reporting, made themselves complicit in Weinstein’s reign of terror. Farrow notes the bravery and integrity of some NBC employees, including anchor Rachel Maddow and producer Rich McHugh. But his account makes clear that the network’s bosses — NBC News Chairman Andy Lack, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim, and MSNBC President Phil Griffin — deserve to be called “enemies of the people.”
Farrow began reporting on Weinstein in January 2017. By the next month, he had one of Weinstein’s victims, actress Rose McGowan, stating on camera that Weinstein had raped her — an allegation that McGowan corroborated with a legally-binding settlement. Shortly thereafter, Farrow had an audiotape and a corroborating settlement claim from another on-the-record source: the model Ambra Gutierrez, who claimed that Weinstein had forcibly groped her. By summer, Farrow had dozens of sources confirming his story. But NBC shut it all down.
Later, Farrow discovers the real reason for NBC’s reticence: Weinstein, who knew of the multiple sexual assault allegations against NBC anchor Matt Lauer, had blackmailed the network into quashing the story. After learning of Farrow’s reporting, Weinstein had his friend Dylan Howard, the head of American Media, Inc. (which owns the National Enquirer and RadarOnline), pull shelved stories on Lauer for Weinstein to use as leverage over NBC. All the while, he was sending gifts to Oppenheim, such as bottles of Grey Goose, and making livid phone calls to Lack in a desperate bid to kill the story.
In part, Griffin, Lack, and Oppenheim’s decision to cover up for Weinstein was motivated by immediate self-interest: None of them wanted to risk losing Lauer, one of the network’s stars, or be exposed as having ignored his sexual predation. But they also wanted to maintain their proximity to Weinstein. Farrow notes that Oppenheim, though a successful journalist from the start, had made a foray into screenwriting and evidently craved the cozy relationship with celebrities that his connection with Weinstein brought. Lack likewise “dreamed of Hollywood.”
Weinstein, in turn, understood psychology well enough to manipulate those around him. Just as he alternately bullied and flattered his female victims, he played on the vanity of figures like Lack and Oppenheim, praising them and granting them the exclusive Hollywood access they craved. But Farrow had been a household name since his childhood, when his mother accused her then-husband, Woody Allen, of abusing Ronan’s sister, Dylan. (Dylan would later repeat this accusation in a 2014 New York Times op-ed, which Ronan publicly supported.) He was immune to such overtures.
Not that Weinstein didn’t try. When Farrow finally got Weinstein on the phone to comment on his New Yorker story, the movie mogul attempted some pop psychology. “I know what you want,” Weinstein said. “I know you’re scared, and alone, and your bosses abandoned you, and your father — you couldn’t save someone you love, and now you think you can save everyone.” Weinstein wasn’t wrong, but Farrow didn’t care.
Farrow’s narrative features some uniquely cinematic plot twists. In 2016, Weinstein hired Black Cube, a private intelligence company staffed with ex-Mossad agents, to follow Farrow and hack his communications and use undercover operatives to befriend and manipulate McGowan. But for all the high drama of the Weinstein case, Farrow makes clear that the mogul’s crimes — and the conspiracy to hide them — were just the worst of many. Lack and David Corvo, the Dateline veteran who took control of the Weinstein story after NBC decided to kill it, delayed publication of a 1999 Juanita Broaddrick interview, in which Broaddrick accused President Bill Clinton of raping her, until after the Senate had voted to acquit Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. The network also sat on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Donald Trump admitted to groping women, until a reporter from the Washington Post published the tape and forced its hand.
All the while, NBC was protecting Lauer, not only because he was a star, but also because the network’s top bosses enjoyed treating the office like a frat house. Lack repeatedly initiated affairs with younger female colleagues and then punished them after they split up. Griffin dragged his female producers to strip shows and shared smut around the office. Oppenheim condoned it all. How could anyone expect them to hold Weinstein to account?
But as trite as it may be, the truth won out.
After the New Yorker published the Weinstein story, Oppenheim offered Farrow a final defense of his decision to bury it. He explained “there was a consensus about the organization’s comfort level moving forward.” But in the end, as Farrow notes, catching a story doesn’t mean it’s killed. Farrow first met McGowan in 2010, while he was working at the State Department. McGowan was visiting the office, and Farrow’s bosses “asked if I’d join them for lunch, like they were looking for a language specialist and figured I spoke fluent actress.” At the lunch, McGowan asked him about his defense of Dylan’s allegations.
“I was asked to say something,” he replied. “That’s the end of it.”
“There’s no end to it,” McGowan said.
Griffin, Lack, and Oppenheim would no doubt disagree. For them, Catch and Kill is bound to be the beginning of the end.
Tiana Lowe is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
