New York Mag Predictably Papers Over Olivia Nuzzi Scandal

The corporate media’s corruption is so predictable.

Several weeks ago, when the controversy first emerged over New York Magazine correspondent Olivia Nuzzi engaging in an inappropriate relationship with a story subject — then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — I predicted how the magazine would deal with the controversy, largely by covering it up. Thus far, the magazine has followed that prediction to a T.

In so doing, however, New York Magazine revealed how corporate media betray their prejudices. In many if not most occasions, the true corruption comes not from what media figures write, but what they decide not to write.

Magazine’s Whitewash

New York Magazine’s Oct. 21 update on the controversy read in its entirety:

Last month, the magazine enlisted the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine to review Olivia Nuzzi’s work during the 2024 campaign. They reached the same conclusion as the magazine’s initial internal review of her published work, finding no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. Nevertheless, the magazine and Nuzzi agreed that the best course forward is to part ways. Nuzzi is a uniquely talented writer and we have been proud to publish her work over her nearly eight years as our Washington Correspondent. We wish her the best. 

In noting the fact that representatives for the magazine would not answer my questions about whether it would release the full results of its “independent” investigation so that readers could judge the behavior of the magazine for itself, I guessed that New York Mag would likely put out “a short and sanitized summary while keeping the damning details private,” use the report to fire Nuzzi, and let another Democrat outlet hire her quietly in several months. In short, they’d employ a “solution” to paper over the issue without dealing with the underlying problem.

Other than avoiding the word “fire” or “terminate” in the statement — which lawyers for Nuzzi and the magazine likely spent hours negotiating over — that’s exactly what happened. Hush up the matter, let Nuzzi go to some other leftist publication, and move on as quickly as possible.

Bias of Omission

But the tell came in the statement claiming that New York Magazine and the “independent” review discovered “no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias” in Nuzzi’s “published work.” Those two cleverly parsed words leave a hole big enough to drive a Mack truck through — because the problem isn’t the words Nuzzi did write, but the words she didn’t.

As I noted several weeks ago, Nuzzi, by her own admission, withheld evidence for months about President Joe Biden’s mental decline that she first came to know about in January and saw firsthand during events surrounding the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in April. She failed to publish anything on the matter until July, after Biden’s atrocious performance in the June presidential debate finally made his health and mental fitness a topic that neither the media nor Biden could ignore.

But ignore the matter both Nuzzi and her colleagues did for months. And in Nuzzi’s case, she has admitted she sat on damning information about one presidential candidate (Biden) that she witnessed with her own eyes, even as she was having an inappropriate relationship with another presidential candidate (Kennedy).

Read Between the Lines

In many cases, reporters demonstrate their corruption not through their words but through their silence. I had one admit as much to me in October 2020, claiming that colleagues would not write negative stories about Biden for fear of costing him the election. That statement speaks both to the weakness of Joe Biden as a candidate — whereby reporters feared that a single story could cashier his entire presidential campaign — and the corrupt ways in which the media silence stories that do not meet their preferred narrative.

The examples are almost too numerous to mention. They also go well beyond the “conspiracy of silence” regarding Biden’s mental health condition in the months and years leading up to the June presidential debate, and the stories about Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop the media suppressed four years ago. 

For instance, how many Americans know that, while serving in the Senate, Joe Biden offered legislation to sunset Medicare and Social Security every four years? Was the press too lazy to dig into Biden’s lengthy Senate career or too corrupt to report on the results when they did? (More likely both.) Why was an outlet like Politico fixated — one could say obsessed — with the taxes of former President Donald Trump, even as current President Joe Biden was spending months trying to get legislation through Congress to raise a Medicare tax Biden went to great lengths to avoid paying himself?

Put simply, New York Magazine’s statement claiming it suffered no damage to its integrity from l’affaire des Nuzzi isn’t credible for the same reason the corporate media as a whole aren’t credible: What the press doesn’t say is far more powerful than what it does.