Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators

by Ronan Farrow

“He creates the situation in which your silence will benefit you more than speaking out will,” Canosa said of Weinstein.

This was the complex reality of sexual assault for so many survivors: these were often crimes perpetrated by bosses, family members, people you can’t avoid afterward.

Bourdain said Weinstein’s predation was sickening, that “everyone” had known about it for too long. “I am not a religious man,” he wrote. “But I pray you have the strength to run this story.”

One after another, the AMI employees used the same phrase to describe this practice of purchasing a story in order to bury it. It was an old term in the tabloid industry: “catch and kill.”

They’d caught, and they’d killed, and the intention had been to swing a presidential election.

In the end, the courage of women can’t be stamped out. And stories—the big ones, the true ones—can be caught but never killed.