Corrupt ‘Reporters’ Like Olivia Nuzzi Are Destroying Democracy

Over this past weekend, the front page of New York Magazine’s website advertised: “Yes, the system is rigged.” They should know — their reporters are the ones doing the rigging.

The news that Olivia Nuzzi, a New York Mag reporter, was placed on leave for an inappropriate relationship goes far beyond a Beltway romance. It speaks to how the media — even as they claim to want to “stand up for democracy” — corruptly influence the political process, thereby undermining the democratic values they purport to support.

‘Inappropriate Relationship’ Belatedly Disclosed

On Thursday, New York Magazine issued a statement announcing that Nuzzi had been placed on leave because she “acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures. Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign.”

Nuzzi also issued her own statement claiming that “the relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”

Other reporting indicates that the “inappropriate relationship” was with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., after a magazine profile on him that she wrote, which ran last November. Nuzzi told The New York Times that the relationship lasted from last December through last month.

‘Conspiracy of Silence’

What specifically happened between Kennedy and Nuzzi is largely irrelevant, except as salacious gossip. Far more weighty are Nuzzi’s actions — or, more specifically, her inactions — after this relationship commenced.

In July, Nuzzi wrote a story about the “conspiracy of silence” surrounding Joe Biden’s declining health. (The story is still pinned to the top of her Twitter profile.) In the story, Nuzzi admitted that she began hearing disturbing stories about Biden’s increasing mental and physical fragility beginning in January. However, she didn’t publish the story until early July — after the disastrous presidential debate that ultimately forced Biden to end his campaign.

At the time, Nuzzi tried to defend herself from critics accusing her of suppressing the story by saying that “reporting takes time,” and that she had used the intervening six months to compile enough solid evidence for a story.

Even at the time, such claims seemed highly suspicious. In the July story, Nuzzi discussed events she personally witnessed at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April, when Biden had, to her eyes, seemed very out-of-sorts. She had no reason not to publish that information at the time, even if she couldn’t include additional details from sources who refused to provide corroboration for a published story. Last week’s revelations tear those already-flimsy excuses entirely to shreds.

Massive Evidence of Bias — and Election Interference

I emailed press contacts for New York Magazine about their Thursday statement, which stated that “an internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias.” I asked specifically about the claim of no “evidence of bias” related to Nuzzi not publishing information about Biden’s infirmities 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.

Who’s the ‘Threat to Democracy’ Now?

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.

More Than a Joke

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.

Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group, a policy consulting firm based in Washington, and author of the book “The Case Against Single Payer.” He appeared in the 1995 “Jeopardy!” Teen Tournament and is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.