A Cursed Explainer About Olivia Nuzzi and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Late Thursday night, news broke that New York magazine had placed Washington correspondent Olivia Nuzzi on leave after learning that she’d allegedly had a relationship with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” read a statement from the magazine. The statement identified the other party only as “a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign.” Oliver Darcy at Status reported that that person was RFK Jr., “according to people familiar with the matter,” reporting that has now been matched by other outlets.

You might have some questions about this whole situation.

Who is Olivia Nuzzi, again?

Nuzzi is an esteemed political journalist best known for her profiles of complicated figures in Washington. You might have read her July feature, “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden,” which ran before he dropped out of the race, or her September piece on Donald Trump’s post-assassination-attempt ear. Or her November 2023 profile of … none other than RFK Jr.

Before joining New York magazine, she was a political reporter for the Daily Beast. Nuzzi also has a new Bloomberg Television interview show. And she once made a brief cameo on Billions.

Wait, did the relationship start before or after that profile? 

After. Here’s her statement:

Earlier this year, the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal. During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source. 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.

So it wasn’t a physical relationship? Just some texting?

Well, according to reporting from CNN, a person with direct knowledge of the matter “said the relationship was emotional and digital in nature, not physical.” You could imagine that “digital in nature” encompasses … a lot of different things.

How long did it last?

Nuzzi told New York magazine that it started in December 2023, and went through the end of August, according to a statement that David Haskell, the magazine’s top editor, sent to staff.

What has RFK Jr. said?

This is the statement that a representative for him has been giving the media: “Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.” Which wouldn’t be incorrect if the relationship was only digital!

RFK Jr. is 70. I heard she’s only 31? She must have broken into journalism at a very young age.

Yes, that’s true! At 20, Nuzzi wrote a piece for a now-defunct website called NSFW Corp and a follow-up for the New York Daily News about her time as an intern on the Anthony Weiner mayoral campaign.

How does every sex scandal somehow involve Anthony Weiner? It’s 2024.

Yes, Weiner reportedly called the female interns “Monica” after former Clinton White House intern Monica Lewinsky. After the articles came out, Weiner’s spokesperson called Nuzzi a “slutbag” and other expletives. This was back in 2013.

Ugh. OK, so clearly she survived that. 

Yes, and she went on to make a career out of reporting juicy pieces on politicians, experiencing a meteoric rise through journalism. She’s become one of the best profilers in the country, with a stylish pen and an uncanny ability to get controversial figures to talk. She’s profiled Dr. Oz, Kellyanne Conway, and Hope Hicks.

Why does anyone care about her relationship, or whatever, with RFK Jr.?

Despite commonplace portrayals in film and television, it’s universally considered unethical for journalists to sleep with sources, or have close personal relationships with them of any kind. It’s exceedingly rare and almost always results in firing or a swift departure from the profession.

There are exceptions: New York Times reporter Ali Watkins had a romantic relationship with Senate Intelligence Committee security chief James Wolfe, who went to prison for making false statements to the FBI. Watkins had disclosed her relationship to bosses at the Times, but not to her superiors at McClatchy News—where she interned and later worked—when the relationship started. Watkins was reassigned to a different beat at the Times.

Why can’t you have a personal relationship with a source?

When dealing with sources, it’s important to be impartial. If you’re friends with a source, or in a romantic relationship with a source, your allegiance can end up being to them rather than to your readers. The ideal is that reporters and sources never really have buddy-buddy relationships. In practice though … that doesn’t mean that journalists don’t have favorite sources, sources that favor them, or all sorts of strange access-based rapports with important or well-informed people. That’s especially true in Washington.

So, sometimes reporters are friendly with sources and get away with it. But romantic entanglements are a hard no. Writing about Watkins for Politico magazine in 2018, former Slate media columnist Jack Shafer put it this way:

Editors end up policing romances because it’s easy to show that a reporter has lost his impartiality because he’s shtupping his source. It’s harder to prove that friendship has made a reporter a pushover for his sources, so platonic relationships tend to go uncontested, and we stupidly reserve the scarlet letter of lost impartiality for romancing journalists only. The ethics cops seem oblivious to the fact that people you haven’t slept with often wield more influence over you than those who have.

Ok, but we don’t know exactly what happened with Nuzzi and RFK Jr. …

Right, but obviously whatever it was is enough that her employer is looking into how it could have influenced her reporting. Though he wasn’t her subject during the “digital relationship,” she was still reporting on the 2024 presidential race, and RFK Jr. was in fact running for president.

New York magazine has employed a third-party firm to conduct an audit of Nuzzi’s work, which will inform the exact nature of any disciplinary action that is taken. In the meantime, she’s on leave, and her pieces have a note to readers linked at the top.

Are either Nuzzi or RFK Jr. in a relationship separate from whatever happened between them?

Yes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is married to Cheryl Hines, the actress from Curb Your Enthusiasm. Olivia Nuzzi became engaged to Ryan Lizza in Oct. 2022, but they have since broken up. Lizza reports for Politico’s Playbook.

Uh, does HE have to cover this?

Here’s a statement from him that ran in Playbook: “Because of my connection to this story through my ex-fiancée, my editors and I have agreed that I won’t be involved in any coverage of Kennedy in Playbook or elsewhere at Politico.”

Didn’t … Ryan Lizza have a scandal of his own?

Yes. Lizza was fired from the New Yorker in 2017 over allegations of “improper sexual contact.” He rebuked the claims and said he was dismayed that the magazine would mischaracterize a “respectful relationship” as something untoward.

Aren’t Nuzzi and Lizza writing a book together?

They were co-authoring a book about the 2020 campaign, but the publisher, Simon & Schuster, shelved the project in 2021. The New York Post reported that Nuzzi had personal struggles that led to the delay of the book, and that the pair weren’t able to get the scoops the publisher wanted.

What will happen next?

Who knows! Again, Nuzzi is a really talented reporter and writer. If she’s fired, another outlet will probably take a chance on her with assurances that she will not again engage in any weird sexting with conspiracy-theorizing brain-worm-having presidential-candidate sources. (Or any sources for that matter. If she stays at New York, she could be reassigned away from the Washington beat.) There’s always a chance that this is, in fact, the end of her reporting career. But I would doubt that.