Free Press placed Olivia Nuzzi, a famous writer at New York Magazine, on leave while an outside group reviews an issue about the work she does. In a story, the magazine said Nuzzi told them she had involved in a close relationship with someone during the time she inscribed about him campaigning for president, in 2024.
The magazine didn’t name the person, but a source told CNN that it was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He vainly ran for president as an independent and presently has endorsed Donald Trump. The source also said the relationship was not sexual in nature but an emotional affair and involved messages online.
Kennedy’s lone encounter with Nuzzi was an interview, according to a spokesperson for the assemblyman who said the article was not kind to him.
Reporter Oliver Darcy broke this relationship news on Thursday.
Olivia Nuzzi, in her statement: “I also regret that I did not tell The Daily Beast from the get-go what I knew about our relationship before working here.
Although this did not result in taking Kennedy as a source while he was still working for her to vice versa, she claimed that the relationship had turned more personal during their interaction.
She admitted that it should have been disclosed in the interest of transparency to avoid any perceived conflict of interest, and apologized to her colleagues on the bench.
Nuzzi apparently confirmed to New York Magazine that she was on leave feeling the publication out and is currently “running those [texts] down,” per NYM. [] Last November, Nuzzi penned a profile of Kennedy and interviewed him while hiking. She had also written previously stories on Donald Trump and the 2024 race.
Kennedy married actress Cheryl Hines in 2014. Hines did not respond to WIRED ‘s request for comment on Kennedy’s relationship with Nuzzi or his newfound support of Trump. Hines campaigned for her husband during his 2008 run, but has been low key about his embrace of Trump.
Nuzzi’s link to a subject she had written about broke New York Magazine’s ban on conflicts of interest. Had the magazine known, she never would have been given that presidential campaign to cover.
Additionally, they said they had gone through her previous publications and nothing in those were wrong or showed any signs of bias, yet still regretted the damage to their readers’ trust.
The magazine’s editor, David Haskell, alerted the staff that they discovered Nuzzi’s relationship with Kennedy days before the news hit publicly. The relationship lasted from December, when her article on Kennedy was published, to August, he said.
Haskell said that while she did not have conflicts of interest in her writing, the non-disclosure appeared as one and thus “eroded” trust with the publication’s potential readers.
Nuzzi was formerly engaged to Ryan Lizza, a star political reporter at Politico. Lizza said that he will stay away from any Kennedy coverage appearances for Politico in light of the matter.
