The New York Times’ profile of disgraced journalist Olivia Nuzzi has been torn to shreds online, with many pondering how her unethical sexting relationship with a source landed her such a flattering puff piece.
After the publication dropped it’s tell-all with Nuzzi, who shared details about her torrid digital affair with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., several critics took to social media to denounce the profile and its subject.
“This is one of the weirdest profiles I’ve ever read,” one critic on X put it bluntly Friday. Another chimed in, “Olivia Nuzzi commits what, for any other reporter, would be a career-ending ethical transgression and a year later gets rewarded with a plum journalism job at Vanity Fair and a glossy write-up of her new book in the New York Times.”
One X user even blasted the Times for giving “a heroic PR puff piece” to “a journalist who had a romantic relationship with a source.” They added, “Can’t imagine they would do this kind of service journalism for many others.”
In fact, journalist Jeremy Fassler, who has contributed to the New York Times previously, went as far as to call Nuzzi’s scandal and subsequent Times story “an indictment of modern journalism.”
However, many were simply exhausted to have to hear more about Nuzzi and Kennedy’s inappropriate relationship. An X user may’ve put it best when they wrote: “Everything I’ve learned about RFK Jr. and Olivia Nuzzi has been against my will.”
TheWrap’s Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman expressed a similar sentiment, writing, “Anybody else nauseated by having to be exposed to more of Olivia Nuzzi’s self indulgence and Jacob Bernstein’s needy neediness?”
Still, not everyone voiced criticism for Nuzzi and the Times following the profile’s release. Kate Bennett, a former White House correspondent for CNN, spoke out in defense of Nuzzi, calling her story “a beautiful lesson in accountability and truth.”
Alas, this won’t be the last we’ve heard from Nuzzi, given her memoir, “American Canto,” is set to release on Dec. 2.
