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Ronan Farrow’s New Book May Finally Reveal Why NBC Shelved Weinstein Story

REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Ronan Farrow has signed a second book deal, according to publisher Little, Brown, and Company. The book will dig into the story behind the 2017 New Yorker investigative piece that brought down movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and earned Farrow a Pulitzer Prize.

The new book, “Catch and Kill,” is “a deeply personal story about a reporter grappling with how much to put on the line to protect the truth, and a story that expands our understanding of the forces in law, politics, and media that maintained a conspiracy of silence around [Harvey] Weinstein and other men in power committing gross abuses with impunity,” according to Little, Brown.

The phrase “catch and kill,” which Farrow has used before, references the modus operandi of publications that buy the rights to a story for the sole purpose of making certain it never gets published.

In this new book, Farrow suggested he plans to reveal what went on behind the scenes of the Weinstein story.

It’s been important to me to keep the spotlight focused on the survivors of sexual violence who risked so much to speak to me and other reporters whose work I admire. I’ve also always said that the questions about the behind-the-scenes mechanics that suppressed these revelations are legitimate — and that, when enough time had passed, and once I had marshaled the evidence needed to tell this story, I would find a way to do so. ‘Catch and Kill’ is that story.

Farrow’s publisher weighed in as well, saying, “despite the enormity of the conversation his reporting helped ignite, some of the most astonishing disclosures about what he uncovered are still to come.”

Farrow did put one persistent rumor to bed via Twitter. He said that the story was not quashed by NBC because they did not have confidence in him or his abilities.

Farrow told CNN’s Brian Stelter shortly after the Weinstein story broke that he was keeping himself out of the story in order to keep the focus on the women who had come forward. “I don’t want to become the story right now. There may be more to say about that later.”

“More to say about that” is what Farrow plans to deliver in “Catch and Kill.”