hello. at its best, the day really not too bad at all, there are some decent gaps in the cloud across the north of wales, the north of england and north—eastern quarter of scotland. elsewhere, a lot of cloud but are fairly settled start to the new year, although quite breezy gci’oss new year, although quite breezy across the north—west and quarter, a lot of isobars on that chart. overnight, some of the gaps may well persist, particularly to the eastern side of the pennines, the north—eastern quarter of scotland. if that's the case come your temperatures will dribble away. not overly cold for the time of year and many of you will not be scraping the ca i’s many of you will not be scraping the cars on thursday but the dramatic change on thursday is that we will see not one, but to weather fronts affecting northern and western parts of the british isles on what is going to be quite a noticeably breezy day across many parts, a lot of cloud again ahead of the weather fronts, you see the extent of the rain into the afternoon eventually

rocking up into parts of wales. generally speaking, the further south and east you are, the drier your day will be. take care, goodbye. this hello, this is bbc news. the headlines... bushfires have killed at least eight people in south—eastern australia since monday and destroyed more than 200 homes. two men and a woman are killed after a lorry collides with a car in stanwell in surrey on new year's eve. the mother of the british teenager found guilty of lying about being raped in cyprus back calls for tourists to

boycott the country. in their new year messages, the prime minister says brexit will mark a ‘new chapter‘ for the uk, while the archbishop of canterbury urges people to heal the divisions of recent years. next, in one of the highlight‘s of the year for hardtalk, sarah montague interviews journalist ronan farrow, who won a pulitzer prize for his investigation of harvey weinstein. welcome to hardtalk. i'm sarah montague. 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 metoo movement — an attempt at breaking the silence around sexual assault. in his new book catch and kill, he's posing difficult questions about the powerful media

institutions he says tried to suppress the story. so how did the hollywood insider, the son of mia farrow and woody allen, break the story that took the shine off tinseltown? ronan farrow, welcome to hardtalk. 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 buries 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. ok, now, you say that this is effectively what nbc did — yourformer 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 with adverse subjects of reporting to bury difficult stories, and there's a whole carefully fact—checked body of reporting and claims from all of the working level journalists around this that, you know, this was shut down. and much of that has now been admitted to in the conversation in the wake of this book.

but it is not the same catch and kill practice in the literal sense which involves the acquisition of the rights to a story in a financial transaction, and then the killing of it. ok, now nbc would probably not — i mean, they rebut a lot of the allegations that you've made about them, but why do you think, when you where there working for them and trying to follow this story — and it was after a story — after all, a story that they had given you and were paying you to follow, why do you think that they didn't want it told? well, in fact, there is not that much daylight between the carefully laid out reporting in this book and what nbc and its reporters have now admitted to. rachel maddow, one of their talents, got on air and said "i have independently confirmed that this did indeed happen — nbc ordered a halt to the reporting" and the whole saga is laid out in this book that my producer and i — a man named rich mchugh who ultimately became a whistleblower on this, went to the new york times with this story — received first orders to pause reporting and then hard orders to stop. the book looks at why nbc, as it was having secret conversations with harvey weinstein

— at least 15 that they have now admitted to, and there are transcripts and other records laid out in the book, and in which they made assurances the story would be killed — was parroting arguments from his attorneys that news organisations cannot report on secret sexual harassment settlements that bind victims to silence. at the same time, they were enforcing and brokering their own agreements of that very type. ok, now, we'll come to what they say about this in a minute. but it's curious to know — i'm curious to know how it happened. how it was that you were — because you were spending months on this story — how was it that it was — you were effectively being prevented from taking it any further? this escalated from what, from the beginning, was a suspicious order to put it on the backburner, focus on other things, up to a pause on reporting — there was that euphemism used — and then finally to a direct order to cancel interviews with rape victims. now, nbc, we should say — i mean, they said — they say from their part that the story wasn't ready, that it didn't — that you did not have a single victim or witness

on the record, on camera, and that it contained multiple claims not supported by the underlying reporting. and i should note that their rebuttals are in this book in full. this is a very careful work of investigative reporting — it is fact—checked by one of the senior fact checkers at the new yorker — and all of their responses are in there. it is not in dispute now that they ordered a stop to reporting. it is not in dispute that they were always multiple named woman in the story. yes, but in a way, there are always stories. i mean, anyjournalist knows this. you follow something and there is a point in which you have to pull the plug. yes. now, and that is entirely acceptable for a news organisation to do it. it's the reasons that they do it. certainly. i've done it myself. and their suggestion is that... i've done it myself if there is not enough... ..is that you didn't have the material ready to go at that stage. you can see laid out in the book very clearly what we did and didn't have. we always had multiple named women. the general counsel of the new yorker has gone on the record saying we saw the reporting that nbc sent away that concluded multiple women on the record.

there was a recording of harvey weinstein admitting to a sexual assault — and, indeed, to a pattern of sexual assaults. now, mostjournalists who have looked at this have said that should've gotten on air immediately — that was my producer's conclusion. um, they're certainly entitled to anotherjudgement. what is at issue here is not this question of did we have enough? it's that they ordered us to stop. they prevented us from getting more. 0k. and this is after they promised harvey weinstein they would kill the story. you know that they promised harvey weinstein that they would... indeed. and those quotes have not been disputed. because you mentioned the number of phone calls that were made, and they make the point that there were at least 15 calls, but many of them were unanswered, and of those, only one was to your immediate boss, noah oppenheim. and initially, those calls were concealed and they didn't admit to that, so we're seeing a steady progress in this, where they've gone from saying, you know, "ronan farrow is a terrorist" and denying all of this to actually acknowledging "well, maybe there were these secret settlements with harassment survivors and the company. maybe we will let people out of them and maybe we did have these conversations." now, their claim that... what about that particular claim

that they told harvey weinstein they would kill the story? yes. how do you know that? now, there is an author's note at the front of this book that explains that every quote in the book is based on a contemporaneous record that is indisputable. and i can't say exactly who the source of is or what the record is in each conversation, but it is telling that no quote in the book has been disputed. i'll let the facts stand on their own. ok, so let's go back to the why. why would they do that? why would they be prepared to kill a story for harvey weinstein? as they themselves said, they have been at the forefront of the frontline of exposing sexual misconduct. and they had been over many stories — the usa gymnastics, silicon valley, universities, jehovah's witnesses. i mean, there's a whole long list. well, it's worth noting that that is after the outrage about the killing of this story. the journalists at nbc — who are, in many cases, sources in this book — have risen up in outrage about this. many of them have gotten on air and said — said "we have independently confirmed the claims in this book. this is troubling." the digitaljournalists of nbc unionised in protest of this. so the the journalists

at that news organisation, who are wonderful journalists, have been unanimous in saying "this is an important story and, as a result of this outrage, we need more space to pursue tough leads." the stories you're describing are part of what's happened in the wake of all of this. ok, so why? why did it happen, do you think? this is bigger thanjust nbc, sarah. this is about a long history of news organisations who made a calculus that it was not worth taking the risk of going up against powerful interests to report tough stories of this type. and this was particularly true about sexual violence, which is something both of our cultures have failed to speak about for a long time. and in the case of harvey weinstein, there is a plot that is carefully reported out in this book in which, you know, he was huddled with the national enquirer and the top editor there, who was in a business relationship with him, and digging up dirt on people reporting on him. and he, at the same time, was in receipt of information about nbc and the secret settlements they had, and one of their top talents who had a series of allegations against him.

none of this is speculative. the national inquirer began to run stories about matt lauer, this top anchor at nbc, and began to besiege nbc employees with calls about this. ok, but — i mean, nbc in a way, they almost laughed at this suggestion because the national inquirer had so much dirt on matt lauer and was reporting it, the idea that they might be holding back. nbc said it was — uh, sorry — nbc said it was never contacted by ami, or made aware in any way of any threats from them. and they make the point that is was preposterous, this idea that there was — they would take a threat seriously about matt lauer, since they were already covering him so much. and again, that denial is in there, as is the testimony of four different sources who say a threat was delivered. but the point is broader than that, sarah. you can — the book doesn't go farther than the facts of what these sources say and what nbc denies. what is not in dispute, again, is that this was a company with a set of secrets, a long pattern of a corporate practice of burying these allegations with secret pay—outs — which they have now admitted to. and that at the same time that this

reporting was happening and harvey weinstein was bearing down on them with threats and enticements in all these calls they have now admitted to, those secrets were under threat of exposure. ok, but matt lauer, who was one of the nbc anchors, i mean, he himself has — after actually a silence of a couple of years — written out, saying that it was a consensual affair at the heart of it, what you have said is categorically false and designed to sell a book. well, there are seven claims about matt lauer that are mentioned in the book, including the rape allegation that he is referring to. and like every other tract of investigative reporting in this book, it's laid out in a way that is incredibly fair to matt lauer, that incorporates his thinking and rebuttals, and people can decide for themselves when they see this claim from a young journalist who does say that she said no to a specific sex act, that she was too drunk to consent, and that she was assaulted. you know, i'll let peoplejudge whether they agree with that testimonial but certainly, this was something that... because, of course, it was a relationship that went be on — after that allegation. well, you have to be

careful about the terms you use, right? because he says this was an affair, and that claim is in there. she says that, you know, he was the most powerful man at her company and she was fearful and wanted to convince herself that it was ok, so she readily admits there are communications afterwards where she had contact with him. that's a common facet of sexual assault. right. so what happens? you're in a situation where nbc basically say "we're not going to run this story". they suggested i bring it elsewhere. they sent it out of the door. and you describe at the time, "i was kind of rock bottom, career—wise". yes. can you tell us what it was like for you at that stage? well, the book is about the extreme tactics deployed by powerful people to quash these kinds of stories. and so, at that time, not only was i losing myjob over this — i was ultimately, you know, terminated by nbc after i refused to stop reporting on this story — i also was being told by sources to get a gun. i had moved out of my home. i was being followed. and i was ultimately able to follow a trail of clues to document the paper trail and get all of the parties to admit to this international espionage operation

where i was being followed by — it sounds stranger than fiction — but secret agents, and so were sources. it was, to say the least, an unsettling period. and i document that, sarah, not to be "woe is me" but to try to illustrate the sincere challenges that reporters in both of our countries face when they attempt to hold the powerful accountable. i mean, you paint this extraordinary picture of even taking letters to a safe deposit box in case you should disappear as to what people should do. i mean, it does sound fantastical. and yet, there is a documented paper trail and, you know, this is reporting that has not been in dispute. harvey weinstein hired an israeli firm called black cube, which is staffed by former members of the mossad and other israeli military and intelligence entities, and they deployed agents and subcontractors using false identities and front companies. this is how far the wealthy and connected can go to bury the truth. ok, of course he's — will be facing trial next year. he will. and i — one imagines he would dispute all these allegations.

how do you get to the bottom of it? how did you establish those facts? well, i know the format is back and forth but this is not a "he said, she said". he doesn't dispute that. we have the contracts, we have the signatures of his attorney. all parties involved have admitted to that. so, for you, you're in a situation where you're moving out of your home. you are, what, worried about your life? you know, i'm careful to draw the distinction. i was not a journalist in pakistan, in russia, in any number of places where journalists turn up dead all the time when they report on powerful interests. i had the fortunate position of being protected by american criminal laws, being protected by the american first amendment — which, by the way, creates more space in my country than you have in this country to do tough reporting on powerful, litigious people. that's an important distinction. so i am conscious of the position of privilege i was in. i also didn't have a family to support. i didn't have kids. my working level producer who lost his job over this, rich mchugh, he did have kids to support. there were lots of people around this who were in a tougher position, so ultimately, it is difficult but also, i felt lucky.

ok, but you felt driven, you felt it important to tell this story — which, i mean, you could say anyjournalist might feel that. but did — was there something beyond that? was there something else driving you that perhaps related to your own family's experience with abuse? i'm very forthright in the book in talking about the way in which my family history — which included my sister's sexual assault allegation against a powerful guy in hollywood — was weaponised against me and used as a cudgel by harvey weinstein, who searched for any and all personal dirt to throw at me in these legal threat letters that came at me. ok, you said "abuse allegations against a powerful figure in hollywood". i mean, the powerful figure was your father... yes. ..woody allen. and we should — i mean, it's a well—documented story. not everyone is going to know about it, though. so, i mean, this was your mother, the actor mia farrow, had 14 biological and adopted children, some with your father woody allen. woody allen then, when they split up, he married one of your sisters. and another, dylan, who was, what, just two years older than you? yes.

made an allegation when she was seven against your father. yes. and she seems — and you write about it in the book — central and critical to, in a way, what was partly driving you, but also to the way that you went about this story. well, there was no direct factual link between any of the stories that i have reported on, and her own, it gave me an understanding of the stakes of the issue and what the sources that i was talking to at the time were up against, both in terms of the personal trauma that they went through and also in terms of the system that rapidly clamped down on them to try to stop them from talking. so, i had insightand i cared deeply about the issue while still being at arms length and impartial and willing to go wherever the facts took me. i think this process very clearly was very fair to harvey weinstein. i mean, you — ‘cause you went to recount how you called your sister up before you went to interview rose mcgowan, the actress, one of those making allegations, and you asked for her advice. what did she say?

she talked about how difficult it is to speak about these issues, and hers was a case where a powerful person hired an army of private investigators to try to smear the cops, to try to smear the judge in the case and that's a whole separate fact pattern. but it certainly gave me some insight into the idea that these stranger—than—fiction systems could exist, and it was helpful to speak to her and a number of otherfriends that i have who experienced sexual violence aboutjust how wrenching it is to talk about these difficult parts of one's past. and, yeah, i mean, and obviously, it's had a sort of a profound effect on your whole family. you referred to your fatherjust earlier as "a powerful hollywood figure" and were in a rather strange situation because a few years ago your mother suggested that actually your father might be frank sinatra, and you were sort of — interesting, your response to it. but she said, and who she had been married to before, and it made a lot of people question

why you didn't then do a paternity test, because you could, by taking a dna test, actually separate yourself from this man who you don't refer to as your father. well, i do actually, in my writing about that case, refer to him as my father because it's not in dispute that in ethical, in legal terms, he was both of our fathers, he married one of my sisters, he allegedly, according to her very credible and backed by a lot of evidence claim abused another sister. there is yet another age—aged claim of sexual abuse that came out this past year from another woman and there's been documentation about his sort of obsessive writing about underage girls. so, this is clearly a case of a serial abuser with this tendency and, critically, in terms of dealing with this question that you just raised, woody allen has used as a cajole against my sister and my family this idea that the fact that my sister was adopted, both the sister

that he married and the sister that he sexually abused... he denies this of course. of course he denies the sexual abuse — but in both cases, he has referenced this issue of a lack of biological ties as kind of a soft rationale. it creeps into his arguments, you know, that it's more ok to abuse in this way, to marry the sibling of your children because there's a lack of biological ties. the biological ties don't matter here. crimes matter. abuses of power matters. and that's why that conversation is a distraction. but from your own point of view, would it not be a release if he wasn't your father? i grew up with almost all adopted siblings, you know. i think that when i say that, there's a tendency to react with the lady doth protest too much and we all care so much about paternity and lineage. but for me, i know what the situation is there and it's enough, it's nothing to do with me. i know and i don't need it to be part of the public narrative, which is already one

in which my goal is for this important body of reporting to stand on its own, and this work, which is so much about these brave victims coming forward and brave sources and whistleblowers and all kinds of sources are coming forward. so, even if you took the test, you wouldn't go public with it? well, in other words, while i know what i need to know about this, it is a private matter and surely a distraction from what i think is very clearly substantive reporting. but can i ask you something else, which is to do with — something you were very aware of, which is people not believing these women, and you recount as well about your own feelings with your sister where you were slow to accept what she was saying. and is that something that you were aware, as you were going through this investigation? i've always been very forthright about the fact that i was far from heroic on this issue. i, like so many people, reacting to this and the culture and particularly reacting to this and families where this is a personal and difficult and traumatic issue, just wanted it to go away, and i recount in catch and kill,

this book, the conversations i had with my sister where i told her, "why can't you just shut up? no matter how credible your claim is, it doesn't really matter that much. why bring it up again?" it's going to wrap up this whole machine that attacks you, that attacks my mother — blaming the mother by proxy is the oldest tactic in the book in child sexual abuse cases, so it comes at her often too. and there's this question in so many families and across our society of — is it worth it? part of the journey in this book is me realising it is worth it and it's important. it's important what she did and was important what these brave sources did to out the truth. and harvey weinstein himself said it to you, because you had conversations with him where you were wanting his response to the charges you were making. "you couldn't save someone you love and now you think you can save everyone." how did you feel when he said that? every investigative report requires a long and fair window of comment and a lot of people have asked sort of in surprise about those conversations with harvey weinstein, which are colourful and explosive

because he was a colourful and explosive character, you know, and famous for his volatility. but it's less surprising to me and probably would be less surprising to you, because as journalists, we know when you do a story like this, you're going to spend a long time tangling with the subject of the reporting, and the goal in those interactions was to be as fair as possible, and you'll see in that scene, you know, my response to that is, "let's talk about the allegations against you because these are serious and we want to be fair." so, the moment that the new yorker publishes your story, how do you feel? there's a moment that i describe in the book of it feeling almost like an anti—catharsis, that it was numbing after such a long haul of sitting on all this evidence and all of these obstacles directed notjust at me, but at these incredible sources who had spoken, and just desperately hoping that it accomplished something and having no idea what the impact would be other than as a journalist and as an attorney and as someone who had precisely interrogated the facts, knowing that the evidence was robust enough, that the story

itself would be airtight. the cultural impact... well, as that unfolded, with me too and a lot of women coming forward, what were you... yes, and men in some cases. yes, and what were your thoughts as you watch that? well, my relationship with it is primarily as a journalist. i'm not an activist, i'm not involved in movement building. you said it triggered the me too movement, but really, more accurately, tarana burke, this wonderful american social activist, had been using that phrase "me too" for years, and is still in the trenches in active social change. butjournalists have emotions. they do, and my relationship with it is, therefore, more about the journalistic side, which is i felt incredibly moved by the sources with stories not just of sexual violence, but of many forms of corporate and government corruption and malfeasance flooding into my inbox, and many of those were also stories about sexual violence — people speaking about difficult, untold truths came to me again and again, and i've been able to break other important stories since as a result of that.

i am moved by that, gratefulfor it, and at a time when both of our countries are sceptical of whistleblowers and cracking down on whistleblowers in various ways, this swell of people speaking truth to power has been hugely important to our democracies. you told the guardian newspaper here that the underlying reason that you think was for — for the alleged cover—up wasn't necessarily some evil people at the centre of it, trying to something, it was, you said, "just baseline casual misogyny." yes, but then also, i think, maybe most importantly, it is a story of your garden variety corporate cowardice, and people who see an opportunity to speak truth to power and look the other way not because they're evil, but because they don't think it's their responsibility. this book is full of characters who pass the buck and it's also full of characters who are incredibly brave, the whistleblowers, the sources, that producer i mention. so this catch and kill —

it is going on in news organisations all over the world? absolutely, the problem persists. but there is a real strain of optimism in this reporting and the fact that the sources refuse to shut up, even after all these obstacles were thrown at them, and a whole group of reporters i profile in this story refuse to stop. it gives me hope ultimately. ronan farrow, thank you for coming on hardtalk. thank you. it's a pleasure. hello once again. it day of contrasting fortunes across the british isles to start the new year. for some a lot of cloud, setting quite low in the atmosphere to say

the least. in some spots elsewhere happen related breakneck cloud, particularly in the north of wales and england. overall, it is been a very quiet start to the new year. for that we have to fight the big area of high pressure still dominating the scene on the continent. this —— that we have to thank. with all the cloud overnight and the southerly flow and quite a bit of it as well, it will not be an overly cold night. still others stage, it's weight in relatively mild air. but notice this, creeping ever closer to earth at northwestern quarter of scotland, much cooler, pressure conditions. real player in the weather across scotland, and northern ireland as you see in the first part of their stay. not one, but to weather fronts gradually seep their way ever further towards the north and western part of the british isles. what is going to be a

pretty gusty or all day on part of the british isles. they wind the strongest across the western isles of scotland. given that direction and cloud, it'll be a cool day. a slightly mounted and then was the case in the first part of the week. 30 night into the first part of friday, we complete the transition of introducing those cooler areas. not a raging northerly by any means at all for friday. brighter, yes. the showers getting into the far north of scotland, too. some of those wintry across the very highest ground. temperatures not plummeting away. yes, single figures for many. just orderfor a time into away. yes, single figures for many. just order for a time into double figures in the south. to start the weekend, a ridge of high pressure kills off some of the showers. for many, it is a reasonable beget in prospect. saturday, dry and fine weather. more cloud for scotland and northern ireland and its a bit of rain in the far north—west. the

temperatures, a degree or two at the sight of io temperatures, a degree or two at the sight of 10 degrees or so. into sunday, a milder day throughout. i think it still stays pretty breezy.

this is bbc news. the headlines at 4pm... bushfires have killed at least eight people in south—eastern australia since monday and destroyed more than 200 homes. we have a very real challenge at the moment with a couple of isolated communities, where we've got reports of injuries and burn injuries to members of the public. we haven't been able to get access via roads or via aircraft. two men and a woman are killed after a lorry collides with a car in stanwell in surrey on new year's eve. the mother of the british teenager found guilty of lying about being raped in cyprus backs calls for tourists to boycott the country. in their new year messages, the prime minister says brexit will mark a new chapter for the uk, while the archbishop of canterbury urges people to heal the divisions of recent years.