Reading Ronan Farrow’s book about exposing Weinstein has made me think about my approach to culture writing

‘Catch and Kill’ should be required reading for anyone who works in this industry

Ronan Farrow claims that NBC was resistant to airing his investigation (AP)

Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators came out on 15 October. Farrow was one of the journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct scandal in 2017 (he wrote for The New Yorker; two other journalists, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, published another investigation in The New York Times).

As an entertainment writer based in the US, I consider Catch and Kill to be required reading (as is Kantor and Twohey’s book about the scandal, She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story That Helped Ignite a Movement) and so, for the past two weeks, I’ve been slowly wading through it. My slowness isn’t a reflection of the book’s quality (it’s well written and captivating) – it’s just that Farrow’s account of his investigation into Weinstein is so infuriating that I can only consume it in bite-sized pieces.