Ronan Farrow reveals how he built the case against Harvey Weinstein in new podcast
The Catch and Kill Podcast is a fascinating portrait of the power wielded by the film mogul
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In The Catch and Kill Podcast with Ronan Farrow we learn how a reporter took on one of the most powerful men in Hollywood and helped launch a movement. The series is a companion piece to Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill, which details the case he built against the film mogul Harvey Weinstein (who denies the allegations which include rape and sexual assault) and is, Farrow says, “about the systems that protect powerful men accused of terrible crimes in Hollywood, Washington and beyond”. If there is something faintly uncomfortable about Farrow’s name appearing in lights in the title — many of the stories told here belong to the victims, who risked everything in speaking out about what happened to them — the series itself is a fascinating portrait of the power wielded by Weinstein and the lengths he went to in order to keep a lid on Farrow’s investigation.
Like this year’s Hunting Warhead and Bellingcat podcasts, both of which deal with the minutiae of investigative journalism, this is the tale of how major stories are broken as well as the personal cost to those at the centre of them. Farrow’s story was first published in The New Yorker but here he explains how he had the story earlier in 2015 when he was working for the TV network NBC, but executives there refused to air the story.
As revealed in the opening episode (there have been three so far), Farrow was the focus of a counter-operation to thwart his investigations via Black Cube, an agency based in Israel with links to Mossad. Most startling are his conversations with Igor Ostrovskiy, a private investigator from Ukraine who was contracted to follow Farrow, and who, on realising that he was engaged in a task to thwart press freedom, alerted Farrow to what was happening. Much of Ostrovskiy’s testimony has the feel of a far-fetched spy thriller, though there are flashes of comedy too, such as the time he ended up following the wrong man. Such is his charisma and extraordinary life experience, Ostrovskiy really needs a podcast of his own.
The latest episode is called The Wire and focuses on Ambra Gutierrez, a young model who told police in 2015 that Harvey Weinstein had assaulted her. Their response was to ask her to participate in a sting operation which required her to meet Weinstein while wearing a wire. Here she talks to Farrow about the terror of that encounter and how, rather than signalling the end of her dealings with Weinstein, it proved to be just the beginning as he fought to stop the tape of their conversation from being made public.
Both she and Farrow paint a grim picture of a system that isolates the most vulnerable and is built to protect rich men. Nonetheless, their bravery, tenacity and self-possession take the breath away. Most of all, the series shows how, in the darkest of circumstances, perseverance can pay off.