Over the weekend, the front page of New York Magazine’s website boldly proclaimed, “Yes, the system is rigged.” Ironically, their own reporters are complicit in this manipulation.
The revelation that Olivia Nuzzi, a reporter for New York Magazine, has been placed on leave due to an inappropriate relationship transcends mere Beltway intrigue. It highlights how the media, despite their professed commitment to “defending democracy,” can corruptly shape the political landscape, thereby eroding the very democratic principles they claim to uphold.
On Thursday, New York Magazine announced that Nuzzi had been put on leave after admitting to her editors that she engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while reporting on it—an outright violation of the magazine’s standards regarding conflicts of interest and disclosures. They noted that had they known of this relationship, she would not have been permitted to cover the presidential campaign.
Nuzzi issued a statement asserting that “the relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to avoid any appearance of conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”
Additional reports indicate that the “inappropriate relationship” was with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stemming from a profile she wrote about him last November. Nuzzi revealed to The New York Times that their relationship lasted from last December until last month.
While the specifics of Nuzzi and Kennedy’s relationship may be intriguing gossip, the more critical issue lies in Nuzzi’s actions—or, rather, her inactions—following the onset of this relationship.
In July, Nuzzi published an article addressing the “conspiracy of silence” regarding Joe Biden’s declining health, which still prominently features on her Twitter profile. She admitted that she had been hearing unsettling accounts of Biden’s deteriorating mental and physical state since January. However, she did not publish the article until early July—after a disastrous presidential debate that ultimately forced Biden to suspend his campaign.
At the time, Nuzzi defended herself against accusations of suppressing the story, stating that “reporting takes time” and that she had used the intervening months to gather sufficient evidence for her piece.
At the time, such claims appeared highly dubious. In her July article, Nuzzi recounted her observations from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, where Biden seemed noticeably unwell. She had no justification for withholding that information, even if she lacked corroborative details from uncooperative sources. Recent revelations completely dismantle those already weak justifications.
I reached out to press contacts at New York Magazine regarding their Thursday statement, which claimed that “an internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias.” I specifically inquired about the assertion of no “evidence of bias” concerning Nuzzi’s delay in reporting on Biden’s health issues until after the June debate.
A spokesman said the magazine would decline to comment, but I will interject mine: My @$$, no evidence of bias. Nuzzi, by her own admission, deliberately withheld harmful information about a presidential candidate while she was having an inappropriate relationship with another presidential candidate.
And everyone at the time could see what ended up happening: Kennedy only had a path to electoral victory (or at least relevance) if a large percentage of voters disliked both major party nominees in Donald Trump and Biden. The second Democrats ditched Biden for Kamala Harris, Kennedy faced a voter squeeze that forced him to drop out of the race.
By withholding harmful information about Biden for months — until the first presidential debate made it too obvious to ignore — Nuzzi helped her “friend” Kennedy. In doing so, however, she also denied voters in Democrat primaries the opportunity to vote on a replacement for Biden. Even if she had not come forward until right after the events she witnessed at the correspondents’ dinner, a Biden withdrawal in late spring could have allowed for a more robust, thorough, and transparent process for selecting a Democrat nominee than the backroom coronation that occurred.
Nuzzi’s actions are alarming. The way she played a firsthand role in this presidential campaign — while hiding her obvious conflicts from her readers, not to mention her editorial supervisors — seems so egregious that no respectable journalistic outlet should employ her ever again. After all, the Democrats who might have wanted to vote in the primaries for a candidate other than Biden, particularly if they knew about his deteriorating health, won’t get a do-over, so why should Nuzzi?
But on the other hand, as appalling as Nuzzi’s behavior is, it doesn’t seem that surprising. Countless other “journalists” participated in the cover-up to protect Biden’s flaws in his reelection campaign. Heck, four years ago another reporter flat-out told me her colleagues were deliberately not writing damaging stories on Biden because they didn’t want to be the one to tank his 2020 election bid. Nuzzi just made the fatal mistakes of 1) layering an inappropriate personal relationship on top of typical left-wing bias and 2) saying the quiet part out loud when it comes to the press’ Biden omerta.
In its statement Thursday, New York Magazine announced a “more thorough third-party review” into the Nuzzi affair. But it didn’t say who would conduct the review, and it didn’t pledge to make that full review public. I emailed New York’s staff asking whether the outlet would release the entire review/report. In other words, does the transparency and accountability they expect from public officials apply to their own operation?
I haven’t gotten an answer, and I won’t hold my breath for the full report to get released. Instead, New York Magazine will likely release a short and sanitized summary while keeping the damning details private, use the independent report to terminate Nuzzi, and let some other leftist outlet quietly hire her a few months from now — a superficial “solution” that doesn’t address the underlying problem.
Conservatives have long turned media bias into a punchline. As The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway noted, there’s a long line of reporters making “lustful” comments about their subjects, from Chris Matthews’ thrill up his leg to Oprah Winfrey’s slobbering over Kamala Harris’ inane word salads during their town hall just last week.
But the Nuzzi scandal should teach conservatives about the consequences of this press culture of corruption — not mere bias — on our democracy. After all, Nuzzi helped rig the presidential election — “rig” not in the sense of stuffing ballot boxes but in playing a role in determining who was on the ballot and which candidates Americans would and would not get a chance to vote for.
Organizations on the right need to respond by exposing this cancer for what it is. That means calling out organizations like New York Magazine for non-transparency, corruption, and double standards when it comes to “defending democracy.” It means not engaging organizations full of left-wing hacks to give them the access they crave — why on Earth did Trump sit for an interview with Nuzzi for last month’s New York Magazine when its writers so consistently attack him? — or at minimum calling them on their BS when doing so. It could even mean looking into the FCC licenses held by corporate media conglomerates because said licenses are a privilege, not an inherent First Amendment right.
Thursday’s events made plain what many Americans have intuited: The press has influenced the outcome of this election. Conservatives need to start embracing media strategies that act accordingly.
