Social Media, Hungry for Unreliable Narrators, Feasts on Olivia Nuzzi’s ‘American Canto’

Oliva Nuzzi’s “American Canto” is hitting shelves in two weeks, promising to expose everyone from politicians to the press. Her innuendos and self-indulgent storytelling read more like a stream of consciousness than reporting — the perfect book for the social media age where there’s greater appetite for clicks than confirmation.The cover of “American Canto” features its title and “Oliva Nuzzi” in fonts of about equal size, red and black respectively against a white background. Judging this book by its cover, and some of the excerpts that have appeared so far, the author appears to feel her name is enough to hook readers; so far, that hasn’t been the case.Vanity Fair published an excerpt of “American Canto” on Monday, touting her as a “star political correspondent until scandal led her into exile — and to a California up in flames.” Yes, the devastation in Los Angeles was, in the author’s reckoning, tragic only insofar as it impacted her. “You cannot,” she writes, “outrun your life on fire.”In the cover blurb for “American Canto,” Ms. Nuzzi’s troubles are the fault of others, chief among them President Trump. The book promises “a mesmerizing firsthand account of the warping of American reality” as Mr. Trump “has risen to dominance.” Note, not “prominence,” which would miss a chance to cast herself as a victim of his election.“I think,” Ms. Nuzzi writes, “of how you cannot burn a cloud,” casting herself at once as floating above events and caught in a downpour. She takes no responsibility for the storm over what she calls a chaste, “digital affair” with the secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she was covering for New York magazine.This might have been a “he said, she said” about Ms. Nuzzi’s firing over the incident if only she said anything. Instead, she refers only to “the Politician,” while giving details which point to nobody but Mr. Kennedy. Other targets get aliases, too.By avoiding naming names, Ms. Nuzzi frees herself to be an unconvincing narrator. On Friday, The New York Times posted a story about Ms. Nuzzi, reporting that she “does not try to prove” her allegations as journalists are expected to do. Asked if any of the text messages she says Mr. Kennedy sent “still exist,” she replied, “I don’t have anything to say about that.” In the fact-free world of social media, all the news is fit to print. In response to Ms. Nuzzi’s enumerated liaisons, a 2015 article that she published in New York magazine resurfaced. “Why,” she asked when posting it on X, “does Hollywood think female reporters sleep with their sources?” Why, indeed. Ms. Nuzzi’s former fiancé, Ryan Lizza, wrote on Telo News, his Substack, that Ms. Nuzzi “crossed a journalistic red line” in 2020, too. He pulled the plug on a book they were co-authoring on the presidential campaign because “Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates,” Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Mr. Lizza also recounted how he helped “untangle” Ms. Nuzzi from her “unusual relationship with Keith Olbermann.” She had messaged the former MSNBC host, moved in with him, and he was soon paying expenses including her college tuition.Mr. Olbermann shrugged at the book’s barbs. “This is me,” he posted on X, along with a gif of Neo from “The Matrix” dodging bullets that represented Ms. Nuzzi. Ms. Nuzzi hopes that “American Canto” will get her back into journalism; so far, it’s only making the cloud that hangs over her darken and grow. Rumor, unproven allegations, and innuendos may drive traffic on social media. In newsrooms, she’s being reminded, only reliable narrators need apply.

Social Media, Hungry for Unreliable Narrators, Feasts on Olivia Nuzzi’s ‘American Canto’

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