Opinion: Yes, the RFK Jr.-Olivia Nuzzi mess matters. Here’s why.

The social media posts started popping up Thursday night, standing out among the Thursday Night Football tweets and other typical things, and at first, they seemed so weird it was hard to believe: Olivia Nuzzi, the star political reporter for New York magazine (just ask her) had been put on leave after she engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a source.
Say what?
That was surprising enough. The bigger shock was with whom: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a one-time presidential candidate, current Donald Trump backer and full-time weirdo, about whom Nuzzi wrote a profile in November.
Oliver Darcy broke the story in Status, his media newsletter.
Reasonable people might ask: Who cares? They’re consenting adults, if relatively high-profile ones. Does it really matter?
Here’s a reasonable answer: It does. And I’ll explain why.
Exactly what happened is a little cloudy. The wording gets tricky about what exactly the nature of the relationship – which Kennedy denies – was, exactly.
Nuzzi told Darcy that “earlier this year, the nature of some communication” with “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.”
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I don’t really know what that means, but evidently it is inappropriate enough that Nuzzi felt like she had to tell her bosses and her bosses felt like they had to put her on leave.
In a memo to the New York staff, reported by NPR, the magazine’s editor-in-chief David Haskell said, “As I made clear to Olivia, she had created at the very least the appearance of a conflict, and, by choosing not to disclose this to her editors, had violated our policies and potentially damaged our readers’ trust.”
And those are the magic words: readers’ trust, although there are a lot of other important terms in there. The public’s trust in media, after years of relentless attacks by Trump, along with plenty of reporting missteps and attempts to both-sides bigger issues like threats to democracy, is not exactly at a high point.
This doesn’t help. It’s the kind of thing you see in bad movies and worse TV shows. “Journalist gets too close to source, can no longer be objective.” Cue the romantic music, show a kiss, gag. (New York says it looked at Nuzzi’s stories and found no inaccuracies or evidence of bias, but an independent third party will review her articles from 2024.) Journalists don’t need one more thing to be used against them, no matter what the nature of the relationship was.
Haskell also mentioned “the appearance of a conflict.” Appearance is all it takes, and this creates one. This gives anyone who had it out for the news media already – their name is legion – something to run with.
Nuzzi’s stories are deeply reported, relying on access to well-positioned sources – a form of access journalism, in other words. That can be tricky.
You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, as they say, and the same is true for reporting. A friendly conversation will often make an interview subject more forthcoming, though an adversarial interview can be useful, as well. But it can’t be so friendly that you don’t ask the tough questions that need to be asked. If it makes the subject angry, so be it. If they walk out, then that’s part of the story.
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In a long story about Ruben Gallego, Kari Lake and Arizona politics Nuzzi wrote for New York in April, her interactions with Gallego sound more friendly than those with Lake, but that fits into Lake’s attack-the-media posing. (Lake is a former local Phoenix TV anchor.)
Nuzzi got time with both of them, which she needed for the story.
If this all sounds blatantly transactional, it is. The people you interview generally are not your friends. It is a business transaction on the part of both parties, nothing more. Each side is getting something they need. It isn’t a personal relationship.
If it becomes one, that’s a problem. Or it is at least something that needs to be disclosed right away. Nuzzi didn’t do that but kept reporting on the presidential race and touted Kennedy as a legitimate candidate. Because of her stature in the business and because of Kennedy’s high-profile history of bizarre antics – stay away from bears and whales, it sounds like – the story is now everywhere.
And journalism is all the worse for it.
Bill Goodykoontz is the media critic at the Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared. Reach Goodykoontz at [email protected]. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. X: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter here.