You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service.

This is Hard Talk with me, Sarah Montague.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the programme, and I hope you enjoy it.

The journalist Ronan Farrow won a Pulitzer Prize for his investigation of Harvey Weinstein.

His revelations about the film producer prompted an outpouring of rage at the way women had been treated

and triggered the Me Too movement,

an attempt at breaking the silence around sexual assault.

His investigation was published by the New Yorker, after Ronan Farrow claimed his former employer, NBC, tried to bury it.

He tells the story in his latest book, Catch and Kill.

It's a dramatic tale about power,

money and cover-ups that has propelled him into the spotlight. So how did this Hollywood insider,

the son of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, break the story that took the shine off Tinsletown?

Ronan Farrow, welcome to Hard Talk. Good to be here. Now, many people won't be familiar with the expression,

catch and kill. Can you explain what it means? Catch and kill is an old term in American tabloid journalism.

It refers to buying the rights to a story, not to publish it, but to bury it, sometimes at the behest of a powerful person.

It is used both metaphorically in the plot that unravels in this book,

because this book is about circles of mutual protection and power that bury stories in both of our cultures,

and also literally, because I'm following a trail of clues that leads from Harvey Weinstein using

the media to bury stories all the way up to Donald Trump doing the same.

Okay. Now, you say that this is effectively what NBC did, your former employer when you were

working there and starting trying to uncover the various allegations against Harvey Weinstein.

Well, what happened at NBC is, I think, metaphorically in the category of the media conspiring

...