Catch and kill describes a transaction in which a media company acquires the exclusive rights to a source's account—often through a signed contract and a payment—then deliberately refuses to publish it. Because the source has assigned exclusivity, they are contractually barred from selling the same story elsewhere, effectively burying it. The practice sits at the intersection of tabloid journalism, reputation management, and, in some cases, campaign finance law.
The term entered mainstream political vocabulary through reporting by Ronan Farrow, whose 2019 book Catch and Kill documented how American Media Inc. (AMI), publisher of the National Enquirer, used the technique to shield allies. The most consequential examples involved AMI's 2016 payments related to Karen McDougal and the parallel hush-money arrangement with Stormy Daniels handled through attorney Michael Cohen. AMI entered a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in 2018 acknowledging it had made the McDougal payment "in concert with" the Trump campaign to influence the election. These facts formed the evidentiary backbone of the 2023 New York State indictment of Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, which resulted in a May 2024 jury verdict finding Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records.
For researchers, catch and kill matters on three levels:
- Press ethics: it inverts the publisher's gatekeeping role, weaponizing exclusivity contracts to silence rather than disseminate.
- Election integrity: when coordinated with a campaign, the payment can be characterized as an unreported in-kind contribution under U.S. federal election law.
- Source protection: NDAs embedded in catch-and-kill deals can chill future whistleblowers, a concern raised by press-freedom groups including the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The practice is not unique to the United States—UK tabloid culture has produced analogous arrangements—but U.S. campaign-finance statutes have made it uniquely litigable there.
Example
In 2016, American Media Inc. paid Karen McDougal $150,000 for the exclusive rights to her alleged affair with Donald Trump and then declined to publish, an arrangement later cited in AMI's 2018 non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.
Frequently asked questions
The practice itself is not inherently illegal, but it can violate U.S. campaign finance law if the payment is coordinated with a candidate and not reported as an in-kind contribution, as alleged in the AMI–Trump matter.
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