From the New York Times on Michael Barbaro, this is the Daily.

Today, hush money, catch and kill deals, the threat of blackmail, and elaborate systems has developed to silence women who level accusations against powerful men.

It's Friday, March 9th.

Jim, say I'm a powerful man and I have an affair with a woman.

I think she might take this affair public and I really don't want that to happen.

In fact, I am determined to avoid that happening.

What are my options?

Well, it does depend to some extent how wealthy you are, how powerful you are, and who your friends are, but let me get to that.

Jim Rootenberg covers the media for the times.

So your most common route, sadly, is a payoff, hush money, usually done in the form of a non-disclosure agreement.

You don't talk about this, I will pay you a great sum of money.

What if the woman does not agree to this hush money, to this non-disclosure agreement?

Well, do you have a lot of disposable money that maybe you'd hire a private investigator and they will dig up dirt on the accuser and then give you a file, a dirt file, and maybe you'll present it to her and say,

do you really want to go forward with making this public because I can make this really difficult for you?

So this is basically a blackmail affair.

Yeah, you could call it that.

And what if that threat doesn't work?

That's where it helps to have a friend like David Pecker, owner of the National Anquire.

And what he'll do is he will have his reporters get her story, convince her to sell it to them in an agreement in which they own the rights to her story forever more, and then they will put it in a file and lock it away forever.

So the story is being bought in such a way that it will never be run, but because of the nature of the deal that this woman might sign, it can never be discussed.

The term in the industry, catching kill.

Explain the catch in the kill.

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