Catch and Kill

The Verdict

The Weinstein allegations themselves aren’t really new information by the time this book reaches most readers – The New York Times and The New Yorker had already broken the story publicly. What Farrow adds is the mechanics behind the scenes: how a major network actively worked to kill his reporting, and how far Weinstein’s team went to surveil and discredit sources.

The Black Cube material is the book’s most unsettling thread – private investigators posing as allies to extract information from women who were trying to trust Farrow as a journalist, not realizing they were also being tracked by intelligence operatives working for the man they were accusing.

The connections Farrow draws to NBC’s own Matt Lauer situation give the suppression story a sharper edge, framing it as institutional self-protection rather than a one-off lapse in judgment.

Read it if you want a firsthand account of how institutional power tried to bury a defining #MeToo story. Skip it if you’re mainly looking for more detail on the Weinstein assaults themselves rather than the suppression machine around them.

Book Summary

Farrow reports his own investigation into Harvey Weinstein's decades of alleged sexual assault and rape while working at NBC News, and the book documents how NBC executives repeatedly stalled, weakened, and ultimately killed his reporting despite his sources being on record, before he took the story to The New Yorker, where it published alongside The New York Times's parallel investigation and helped ignite the #MeToo movement.

The book's most unsettling material covers surveillance: Farrow alleges Weinstein hired Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm staffed partly by former Mossad agents, to track Farrow's reporting, infiltrate his sources' trust, and gather information to discredit accusers -- private investigators posing as sympathetic contacts to extract information from the very people Farrow was trying to protect as sources.

Beyond Weinstein, Farrow extends the book's argument to a broader pattern of media companies protecting powerful men accused of assault, including reporting that connects to allegations against Matt Lauer at NBC itself -- Farrow's argument is that NBC's suppression of his Weinstein reporting wasn't an isolated lapse but connected to the network's own incentive to avoid scrutiny of its own culture.

Top 8 Lessons from Catch and Kill

1. 'Catch and kill' refers to the practice of acquiring a story's exclusive rights specifically to prevent it from ever being published, which Farrow alleges was used to help protect Weinstein from exposure.
2. NBC News executives repeatedly stalled and ultimately killed Farrow's Weinstein investigation despite on-record sources, forcing him to take the reporting to The New Yorker instead.
3. Weinstein hired Black Cube, a private intelligence firm staffed partly by former Israeli intelligence operatives, to surveil Farrow and infiltrate the trust of his sources under false pretenses.
4. Farrow connects NBC's suppression of the Weinstein story to the network's own incentive to avoid scrutiny, given later allegations against its own on-air figure, Matt Lauer.
5. The book documents how sources who came forward faced real professional and personal retaliation, illustrating the practical risks that kept many assault allegations against powerful men unreported for years.
6. Farrow's reporting eventually ran alongside a parallel New York Times investigation, and both publications' Weinstein stories collectively helped ignite the broader #MeToo movement in 2017.
7. The book portrays legal intimidation -- NDAs, threatened lawsuits, cease-and-desist letters -- as a systemic tool used to keep victims silent well before any journalist got involved.
8. Farrow's own position as an NBC employee reporting on his own employer's alleged suppression created a direct conflict of interest that the book treats as part of the story, not incidental to it.