L-R: Ryan Lizza, Olivia Nuzzi, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Tasos Katopodis/Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images/Thomas Machowicz/Reuters
“Can we pause this, I’m sorry,” mumbled a sobbing Olivia Nuzzi during her December 2, 2025 interview with Tim Miller of The Bulwark. The tears came after Miller patiently asked why Nuzzi, as a journalist, withheld information about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s (RFK Jr.) alleged drug use in 2024 during his January 2025 confirmation hearing for Health & Human Services Secretary. Instead of addressing this central ethical question, Nuzzi repeatedly deflected, insisting that she had “written about this in my book,” a reference to her 2025 memoir American Canto, which received poor reviews. During the interview, Miller largely avoided questions about the salacious details of what Nuzzi described as a “digital relationship” with Kennedy. However, Ryan Lizza, Nuzzi’s fiancé during her relationship with RFK Jr., indicated that the affair was physical. They have since parted ways. This high-profile public breakup between Nuzzi and Lizza is not a celebrity scandal. It reflects the pervasive unethical greed and perverse incentives driving corporate journalism.
Lizza built a respected career covering national politics for The New Republic, The Atlantic, GQ, the New York Times, and New York Magazine, and later served as the Washington correspondent for The New Yorker. He wrote influential articles about U.S. Presidents, most notably Barack Obama. In 2017, however, Lizza was fired from The New Yorker for “improper sexual conduct,” but went on to work with CNN and Politico. Shortly after the accusations, he began dating Nuzzi.
Nuzzi entered journalism through proximity to power. She interned for Anthony Weiner’s 2013 mayoral campaign and parlayed that experience into a writing position at The New York Daily News. From there, she covered Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign for The Daily Beast and then worked for New York Magazine from 2017 to 2024. In September 2024, during the presidential election, it was revealed that Nuzzi had been in an “inappropriate relationship,” which allegedly saw her sending nude photos, with Kennedy. When the scandal broke, RFK Jr. had just suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Donald Trump. New York Magazine responded by putting Nuzzi on “leave” before parting ways with her in October.
The scandal deepened in 2025 when Lizza launched a Substack called Telos and began publishing a multipart series on Nuzzi’s affair and alleged journalistic misconduct. Since their split, Lizza and Nuzzi have repeatedly faced off in court, with Nuzzi pursuing a restraining order and accusing him of attempted blackmail before dropping the request. Lizza published what he claimed was a sexually explicit poem Kennedy sent to Nuzzi that read “Yr open mouth awaiting my harvest. I mean to squeeze your cheeks to force open your mouth. I’ll hold your nose as you look up at me to encourage you to swallow. ‘Don’t spill a drop.’ I am a river You are my canyon.” Nuzzi publicly insisted that her relationship with Kennedy was non-physical, even while admitting in her memoir that she was in “love” with him and had favorite parts of his body, including his “nose” and “chest.”
The RFK Jr.-Nuzzi relationship shows how journalists’ proximity to power breeds conflicts of interest that undermine their reporting. Salacious indications aside, the revelations about the relationship raised an obvious question: was her coverage of Kennedy journalistic or a conflict-driven effort to boost his campaign? After all, while RFK Jr. was still a presidential candidate, Nuzzi had reported on Democratic leaders allegedly concealing information about Joe Biden’s health. Was that objective or an effort to help his campaign? It is worth remembering that although many people assumed Biden was in cognitive decline at the time, the corporate media establishment either dismissed such claims or ignored them until after the election.
Nuzzi is hardly the only reporter whose proximity to power creates a conflict of interest. For example, Jen Psaki worked for the Biden administration while negotiating a contract with MSNBC. Former White House insiders such as Karl Rove and David Axelrod similarly secured lucrative media roles. Journalists have long formed romantic relationships with powerful political figures, for instance, former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan and NBC’s Andrea Mitchell; Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Connie Schultz and Senator Sherrod Brown; ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman and former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney; journalist Maria Shriver and then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger; former New York Times correspondent Todd Purdum and White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers; and Time magazine’s Matthew Cooper and political consultant Mandy Grunwald.
Yet instead of accountability for her conflict of interest, Nuzzi was rewarded in September 2025 with a prestigious role as West Coast Editor of Vanity Fair. That advancement mirrors a long corporate media pattern in which unethical journalism is rewarded rather than punished. After leaving the New York Times in disgrace for inaccurate reporting that helped justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Judith Miller was hired by Fox News Channel. Rachel Maddow received a massive contract at MSNBC for inaccurate Russiagate reporting. Ken Dilanian became a network star despite collaborating with the Central Intelligence Agency on stories. Some of Lizza’s claims have reportedly pushed Vanity Fair to reconsider Nuzzi’s contract. Lizza claims that Nuzzi also had an affair with Mark Sanford while covering him during his 2020 presidential campaign.
Another thread in this saga that illustrates the rot within corporate media is the role Nuzzi played in Kennedy’s campaign. Lizza alleged, and Nuzzi has since confirmed in her book and in her interview with Miller, that she acted as a political operative of sorts, advising Kennedy on what to wear, which interviews to pursue, and how to conceptualize himself as a character. She even ended one message with “I love you,” followed by heart and kissing-lips emojis. Again, this is simply unethical, as she was covering other people in the race at the time, including Kennedy, but it is not unheard of in today’s unethical corporate media. For example, in 2016, CNN’s Donna Brazile shared questions for CNN-sponsored candidate debates in advance with friends on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In 2020, Fox News Channel perpetuated the false claim promoted on behalf of Trump that the 2020 election was stolen by Dominion voting machines. Also in 2020, CNN’s Chris Cuomo was secretly advising Governor Andrew Cuomo during a sexual harassment scandal while shielding him from accountability on CNN. He was later rewarded with a job at News Nation. Relatedly, the recently released Epstein emails show Michael Wolff acting as an image consultant for Epstein on how he should discuss then-candidate Donald Trump.
It is true that Lizza has conflicts of interest, most notably his romantic past with Nuzzi, and has often failed to provide evidence for his claims about the affair. Among the bombshell claims are that Nuzzi had audio recordings capable of shifting public views on Trump’s assassination and that RFK Jr. and Nuzzi intended to “consummate” their relationship after the 2024 Republican convention. Nuzzi has denied these claims, referring to them as “revenge porn.”
Others have pointed out that much of his content about Nuzzi is behind a paywall, raising the question: is he motivated by journalistic integrity or profit? In response to these critiques, on December 3, Lizza released the memo on Telos that showed Nuzzi providing strategic advice to Kennedy, although she had already admitted to writing it. A journalist acting in the public interest would not hide this material behind a paywall as Lizza has done, nor would he turn a breakup into a weapon. Ultimately, Lizza appears driven less by ethics and more by profit motives within the attention economy, and the lingering bitterness of a jilted lover.
Nuzzi has echoed these critiques of Lizza, but does not explain why she believes she has the right to write about what happened while he does not. In reality, she has not addressed why she feels entitled to profit from a book on the subject, yet considers it unethical for him to do the same through Substack subscriptions.
In her interview with Miller, Nuzzi noted Monica Lewinsky’s sympathy for her situation. It is true that many eventually recognized Lewinsky as one of the first victims of the commercial internet, a young woman vilified for an affair with President Bill Clinton and trapped in a patriarchal system. Yet the comparison fails. Lewinsky was not a media actor; she was a casualty of the media apparatus. Nuzzi and Lizza, by contrast, are agents of that system. They are rewarded for unethical behavior and incentivized to trade access, run propaganda, and weaponize personal relationships. Their scandals are not aberrations, but predictable outcomes of a corporate media architecture that values profits, power, and proximity over public service.
If journalistic ethics truly matter, criticism should not target individuals in the Lizza–Nuzzi–RFK Jr. scandal as mere outliers. Instead, it must confront the system that draws in figures like Nuzzi and Lizza, incentivizes unethical behavior, and rewards it. Only by exposing this cycle of corruption can meaningful reform begin.
- Image credit: CNN
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.