Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes (2021) s01e05 Episode Script

What was the craziest moment
in the fact-checking process
on that first Weinstein piece?
When we're on the phone with Weinstein
and there were some disturbing moments
where I was kind of shocked by how
much he expected things to go his way,
for no good reason,
except that he was who he is.
That certainly emboldened us
to do better.
We knew that the facts and crimes
have to be quite large,
to take someone like that down.
CATCH AND KILL
THE PODCAST TAPES
THE EDITORS
We're living in a precarious moment
when it comes to the free press.
Five employees gunned down inside
the Capital Gazette newsroom.
Washington Post journalist,
Jamal Khashoggi, was murdered.
There's a new war on journalists,
with blurred geographic lines
and intense digital media.
Protestors have ganged up
on the press in several cities.
But there are people on the
front lines of that fight
who make sure the truth
doesn't get buried.
Hey Ronan, this is David Remnick.
I'll be back. I'm just gonna go
meet my son for a quick lunch.
I'll be back by about 2:15.
That's a voicemail from the first
time David Remnick,
editor of The New Yorker, called me.
All that year, I'd been working on
the Weinstein story for NBC News.
But the network, which was receiving
legal threats from Weinstein,
had ordered me to stop reporting.
I had called Ken Auletta, who had
written a profile of Weinstein in 2002
and he had introduced me to David.
I called Remnick and I'll never
forget the word I used.
I said, Ronan Farrow
has broken the code.
He's got the goods
on Harvey Weinstein.
That's how, on the morning
of August 16th, 2017,
I wound up in a New Yorker
conference room
on the 38th floor of 1 World Trade
Center, pitching the story to editors,
David Remnick and
Deirdre Foley-Mendelssohn.
You were nervous
and floating out into Nowheresville
with the story.
And you could tell that you were
really pitching hard.
And there was a relentlessness in your
desire to get the facts out there
and to tell us everything and to make
sure that we were observing it.
And, of course, I remember you
playing us the recording.
Five minutes. Don't ruin your
friendship with me for five minutes.
And outlining the reporting that
you had which seemed significant.
And that there was material
there already
that was strong enough
that the world should see it.
At the time, I was still fighting
to get the story on-air at NBC.
David made it clear that if I lost
that fight, he was interested.
It was an uncertain time for the
reporting. Soon after that meeting,
NBC finally said they didn't wanna be
associated with the story in any way.
And that's when Weinstein
and his intermediaries
started threatening me personally
with legal action,
saying they knew I no longer had the
protection of a news organization.
More women were still going
on the record
and I didn't know whether
to cancel those interviews
or keep pursuing the story
without an outlet.
I got a call from an editor
at The New Yorker who said,
Ronan's gonna call you in a minute.
He needs some help.
I was paralyzed
by the pressures of these
legal threats coming at me.
And you agreed to talk to me
even though The New Yorker hadn't
signed onto the story yet, formally,
and you had no obligation
to talk to me.
And even as standard practice
might have wanted to avoid
talking to someone who wasn't yet
under the egis of the magazine.
I think I made it clear to you
in that conversation,
I don't represent you at this point.
I'm a lawyer for the magazine.
I'm not your lawyer, but if I were,
these are the issues that I would
advise you to be concerned about
and these are the issues that I would
advise you not to worry so much about.
I had sat in rooms with these NBC
executives and even the lawyers
and heard them sort of parrot
Weinstein's argument on this.
If you're interviewing people
who have nondisclosure agreements,
that could put us
in a difficult position,
that could expose us to all
of this legal jeopardy.
I thought then that it's silly
and I think it's proven
to be a silly argument.
People threaten prior to publication
but they're unlikely to sue
prior to publication because
a lawsuit would be public,
and they would be publicizing the facts
that they wanna keep confidential.
And it made such a huge difference in
my life and in the life of the story,
hearing you articulate
that simple common sense logic
galvanized me in a huge way.
After speaking with Fabio,
I kept interviewing sources.
That included moving ahead
with an interview with a woman
who had agreed to speak
for the NBC story,
with her face in shadow
since she feared retaliation.
Rolling.
Obviously, without giving
any identifying information,
what did Mr. Weinstein do to you?
I don't know how to answer that.
Sorry, I know this is hard.
You used the term sexual assault.
Yes.
When you say sexual assault,
what do you mean, exactly?
What did Mr. Weinstein do to you?
He forced himself on me sexually
when it was unwanted
and unbidden and unwarranted.
He forced himself on me.
Why are you speaking out
about this today?
Cause I don't want
anyone else
to have to live with this.
I don't want him to be able
to do it to someone else.
There are people who will
watch this and say,
this is one of the most celebrated
high-profile executives in Hollywood.
How could it be that
there are multiple stories
and never come out publicly?
He's a very scary person.
He does a really good job
of making you believe
that he's your only lifeline,
that he's your only opportunity.
And that if you abuse his trust
in some way
or disloyal in some way,
that he will make your life
very difficult.
She would later go on the record.
Her name is Ally Canosa.
She said that she was repeatedly
raped, assaulted and harassed
over the seven years
she worked for Harvey Weinstein.
The reason why any of this matters
is because of the people involved,
because of the sources, right?
These people were dehumanized
and as a society, that's not okay.
And the reluctance to say
this is not okay is just shameful.
On August, 25th, I sent in a draft
version of the story.
And on September 5th,
I went to The New Yorker offices
to hear their final decision.
You came in and you did seem
a little desperate.
You were pitching.
You were pitching a story.
And you were pitching a set of facts
and you were making
a case for your journalism.
We sort of grilled you. What are
the foundational elements here?
What are the facts? What do we have?
What, what do we know for sure?
And you had it.
David decided to proceed
with the story NBC had passed on.
Once I got the green light,
The New Yorker began
the arduous process
of getting the work to print.
In journalistic circles, there's a lot
of mystique around The New Yorker
and some of that is due to its
legendary fact-checking process.
The checking ethos,
it's not there to be a cute,
eccentric, Santa's workshop.
It's got real purpose.
When we publish, I publish so I can
sleep that night, selfishly.
But that we're doing the right thing.
Fergus and I were called into our boss,
Peter Canby's office,
and they said, there's a story
coming in from Ronan.
Of course, me being allergic
to celebrity, I was skeptical.
But like what is this?
Why are there two checkers on this?
What is this?
What are the stakes?
We just knew that there was
a piece by Ronan Farrow
that they weren't going to say
what it was until it was assigned.
And I'd never experienced
that before.
It was kind of a top-secret thing.
Like, obviously,
we weren't supposed to talk about
the fact that we were working on it.
But once we understood the stakes,
we were very happy to work together.
I think we also agreed that it was
probably good to have a woman checker,
which isn't to say a man can't do it
and Fergus did it incredibly well.
But, you know, there are
these sensitive moments.
Tammy and Fergus were essentially
the story's first line of defense.
They were gonna be tasked
with recontacting all my sources,
corroborating their stories,
looking for more evidence
and going over every word, number
and claim, in hairsplitting detail.
My first reaction was this is something
that will have an enormous impact
on this guy's life and on the lives of
the people who are named in the story.
And we can't fuck this up.
I think that compassion
is probably the most important aspect
of working on a story like this,
compassion not meaning
just being warm and fuzzy.
But really trying to enter someone's
head and heart and feel with them.
That's what half your brain is doing
and the other half is sitting back
and saying, what about that?
What about that?
Cause you have to go over it
in a clinical way.
Like while being sensitive and you
don't do that in a normal conversation.
With even your closest loved ones.
I'd heard some stories like
this from people I know.
And I was very sympathetic
and outraged for them.
But I didn't really feel it
quite so deeply
and I did in a new way
after working on these stories.
Part of the fact-checking process
not only involves
going back to all the sources but also
reaching out to Weinstein's team
who pushed back
on every facet of the story.
Weinstein's team was pushing
very hard for us
not to use the term rape,
to use assault.
And it seemed that that was
the direction things were going.
Assault. An attempt or apparent attempt
to inflict bodily injury upon another
by using unlawful force,
accompanied by the apparent ability to
injure that person if not prevented.
I think there were probably a couple
of colleagues who maybe were skeptical
or thought readers would be skeptical
if we characterized
certain acts as rape.
Rape. Act of unlawful
sexual intercourse
accomplished through force
or threat of force by one party
and implying lack of consent
and resistance by the other party.
There was no doubt that
the allegations in the story
fit the legal definition of rape.
- Was this a sexual assault?
- Yes.
- This was rape?
- Yes.
He forced himself on me sexually,
when it was unwanted.
He forced me to have
oral sex with him.
And I tried to struggle away.
But he's a big guy, you know,
so he overpowered me.
But would using the term
be sensationalist?
Being cautious about something
isn't an excuse for fudging it or
for not telling the truth about it.
Being cautious about it means being
really sure about what happened.
If you're sure about what happened
- Call it what it is?
- Yeah.
It went up to Remnick's office
and I was kinda nervous about it
but I took a deep breath
and I went into his office
and I said, these women
call it rape themselves.
It fits the legal definition of rape.
We will be whitewashing it
and undermining their own voices
if we do not call it rape.
We won't be calling a thing what it is,
which is so important in this moment.
Deirdre said, well, we need to call
things by their proper name.
And I don't mind telling you that
when you're told that by a woman
while you're having this
kind of serious discussion
and a woman of enormous
intelligence and integrity
and not inclined to sensationalism
or anything of the like, you listen.
Now, the stakes of calling it
that are high.
But they were right.
And we made that change.
As we closed in on publication,
things got intense.
We were contacting sources
all over the world
and so sometimes you would get a call
or a text at two or three or four am.
Okay, yes.
I'm totally ready to talk to you.
Right and you're ready
and you pull out your sheet.
There was a lot of kind of carrying
around the story.
Deirdre holed up in her office
for a lot of long nights
to work on drafts of the story.
That building turns off
the air circulation system
at a certain point in the evening
and on the weekends.
So, we were not only in a sort of
pressure cooker to get the story out
but we were in a hot house, more or
less. There were a bunch of weekends
where we were there just sweating,
eating terrible snack food,
fighting over which lines would
stay in and which wouldn't.
In the weeks before publication,
Harvey Weinstein turned his legal
threats from me to the magazine.
On October 2nd, Weinstein sent
his first threat letter
directly to The New Yorker.
It came from Charles Harder, the lawyer
best-known for representing Hulk Hogan
in the case that ended Gawker.
The letter called any pending
reporting on Weinstein defamatory.
And it said that because
my sister, Dylan,
had made an allegation of sexual abuse,
I wasn't impartial on the subject.
Ninety-nine point nine
percent of cases,
the lawyer on the other side knows
this argument is bullshit.
And it bothers me that they would
assert a bullshit argument.
One thing that really shocked me,
he claimed to have written assurances
that NBC agreed that they
would not do any stories
relating to the allegations
contained in your reporting.
Again, as a lawyer
for a journalistic outlet,
I don't know why anyone would ever
agree that they would never do a story.
Again, we've not done stories.
But we would never promise a source
we're never gonna do it.
Harder's letter was 11 pages long.
Fabio's response was shorter.
Dear Mr. Harder, I write in response
to your letter dated October 4th, 2017,
to David Remnick and me regarding
a possible article by Ronan Farrow
concerning Harvey Weinstein.
With regard to your statements
about the independence
and ethics of Mr. Farrow,
we find the issues you raised
to be without any merit whatsoever.
- Sincerely
- Fabio Bertoni.
You know, that was a moment where
my job felt like it got easier
because this is the best
you can come up with?
Yes, well, we'll be sure to preserve
all our documents
related to your stupid claim.
There was one more person
we needed to talk to,
the subject himself, Harvey Weinstein.
We had a big group call, where it
was Weinstein and several lawyers.
We were all in David Remnick's office
and Harvey Weinstein was on the phone.
- On speaker.
- On speaker.
Large portions of the calls
were off the record.
But other parts were explicitly
on the record.
Weinstein's tactics were a lot like
what you've heard in the police tape.
He would play nice. He would
say that he sort of understood
what we did as journalists,
how much he respected us.
He expected it to just go away
with a call to Remnick.
It was clear that he believed
that he was speaking to a peer
and that, you know, if he just said
come on, gentlemanly agreement,
let's make this go away.
He would be able to and that kind
of sent a shudder down my spine.
Cause he had ruled the way he
wanted to rule for a long time.
When that didn't work,
he would wheedle and sort of beg.
He would threaten.
We're gonna see you into the ground.
You're gonna never work again.
Your magazine is going down.
Ronan Farrow is a fraud.
It was more the kind of Loony Tunes
hammer than the little chisel.
At moments, he would deny everything.
He'd say because he'd remained
in contact with some women,
that was evidence that all his
interactions with them were consensual.
At other moments, he seemed
to be admitting to the behavior.
One time he got confused about who
was making an allegation against him
and started going into details about
an allegation we hadn't even heard
and weren't writing about.
At one point, he seemed to make
an admission and the line went dead.
The universal sign for shut up
from lawyer to client
in those situations is this, right?
And it's just a gentle
gesture like this
where it's just a signal to your client
to shut the fuck up right now.
I will bet all the money in my pocket
that the reason that call got cut off
was that Harvey's lawyers
pressed the button to do so
cause they knew he was going too far.
Do I know that for a fact? I don't.
But the phone company's not that bad.
And we reconnected and they were like,
I, did we lose you?
In the end, Weinstein didn't
spend much time
denying the individual
allegations in the piece.
What they offered
was a single statement.
Harvey Weinstein denies all allegations
of nonconsensual sex.
Do you guys remember the night
before the story published?
I think that we still had work to do
in the morning, going through it.
The grim task of counting up the
different kinds of sexual assault
We got all the numbers right
and are any of them overlapping?
And are we counting anyone twice?
You were double
and triple checking things?
The day we published, I stayed
at the office until three or four am
and then I came back before dawn
and watched dawn
sort of come up over
the State of Liberty
and the tip of lower Manhattan
which I could see from my office.
I was waiting for the final
copy edit to come back
before we pressed publish.
It was a sort of calm
before the storm.
At 10:47 am, we hit publish.
There are growing allegations of sexual
harassment and now outright assault
by movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein.
New Yorker magazine reporting
new claims of sexual harassment,
assault and rape.
The New Yorker pushes the story further
and makes the open secret nature
of this alleged behavior
all the more unfathomable.
One of his accusers going to police,
secretly recording her confrontation
with Weinstein.
What do you remember
about publication day?
Relief.
I think we really weren't sure
how the world was going to react.
And I was amazed at both how positive
the reactions of the sources were
and how quickly
it sort of blew up.
Huge number of sexual assault
and harassment survivors
are sharing their stories online.
#MeToo.
Many of the women say they are reliving
painful personal traumas
while hoping to break the cycle.
It blossomed into something
much bigger,
much faster than I think we ever
could have expected.
I don't think we could have known
that this would break open so much.
And I was feeling very amped up
about what it is to exist as a woman
in this particular moment.
Journalism is dwindling
in a way as a profession.
There aren't that many outlets
that have the resources,
the time and the guts to do that.
And that's a really sorry thing
for society as a whole.
Even when the story hit newsstands,
I was still unaware
of the extraordinary lengths that
Weinstein and others had gone to
in order to silence reporters.
Once I started to find out,
I got increasingly worried.
I started looking over my shoulder,
wondering if I was being followed.
And I met Igor and I realized I was.
My boss assigned me
to follow Ronan Farrow.
The goal was to isolate
and identify sources.