https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/20/catch-and-kill-ronan-farrow-review

Ronan Farrow braved tough resistance to bring us his masterful account of a conspiracy of abusers reaching from Harvey Weinstein to the top of the US media

Watching Ursula Macfarlane’s mesmerising documentary about Harvey Weinstein last month, I found myself wondering again how he got away with his alleged crimes for so long. Yes, he was rich and powerful. Yes, he operated in that phoney realm (Hollywood) in which beauties and beasts are apt to go along with one another. And yes, as a producer of genius, he was protected as the goose that laid the golden eggs. Nevertheless, there were people around Weinstein, also rich and powerful, and liberal minded to boot, who knew what was going on. Why did no one speak out? Why did nothing concrete ever stick?

Ronan Farrow’s extraordinary Catch and Kill, in which he masterfully tells the story of his quest to reveal Weinstein’s repugnant activities to the world, doesn’t merely answer these questions. It makes them come to seem complacent, even profoundly stupid. Several times while reading it, I had the sense that, having been blind, I could now see – and for miles, too. But while this brought with it a certain bracing clarity, it hardly came as a relief. As some American critics have already observed, Farrow’s narrative has the pace of a thriller. Were it really a thriller, however, the collusion at its heart would be too much: you would dismiss it as airport pulp. Here is a conspiracy so deeply embedded and far-reaching that even as I write, those alleged to be involved not only remain in their jobs; in recent days, they have pugnaciously denied all wrongdoing in the matter of the reporting of Weinstein’s behaviour.