Bloomberg scrapped PR rollout of Olivia Nuzzi's show after leftwing backlash following her damning Biden story
Nuzzi tells Fox News Digital she hopes Bloomberg will 'show a little more courage in their future endeavors'
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Bloomberg allegedly scrapped major promotion of its new television show hosted by journalist Olivia Nuzzi over left-wing backlash stemming from her damning report about President Biden.
It was announced in early July that Nuzzi, New York Magazine's star Washington correspondent, would be hosting a six-episode interview series called "Working Capital," in which she interviewed prominent people in the political and business world. The announcement came just days after Nuzzi penned a bombshell story putting a spotlight on the "conspiracy of silence" surrounding Biden's mental decline and the first episode was released on July 17.
Semafor reported Sunday that Bloomberg shelved its "splashy PR rollout" for Nuzzi's show "in response to a small Twitter campaign against the journalist by Democrats."
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According to Semafor, after her article, online liberal critics circulated early 2010s tweets she wrote joking about conspiracy theories targeting then-President Obama, claiming they were evidence of racism and demanded Bloomberg fire her.
Bloomberg scrapped its "splashy PR rollout" of its new show hosted by journalist Olivia Nuzzi following backlash from left-wing critics online, according to Semafor. (Photo by Anna Friemoth, courtesy of Olivia Nuzzi)
Nuzzi said she was "disappointed" by Bloomberg's response to the far-left mob in a statement to Fox News Digital, which she previously provided to Semafor.
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"When I write something that agitates the right, I am accused of being a liberal activist. When I write something that agitates the left, I am accused of being a conservative activist," Nuzzi said. "The difference is that mainstream media organizations tend to ignore bad-faith campaigns against reporters led by the right. I have no illusions about massive corporate media entities and their tolerance for even the faintest murmurs of a PR crisis, so I can’t say I was surprised, but I was disappointed."
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Nuzzi addressed her old X posts, saying, "I know a lot of reporters who long ago made the shrewd decision to delete all of their old posts to protect themselves. I would never judge anyone for doing that. But a large part of my project as a journalist is to meet people where they live in gray areas and to run toward complication and nuance, and to understand context as it is or as it was, and I see an effort to conceal jokes I made in the context of the internet of five or 10 or 15 years ago as a kind of dishonesty that I am not comfortable engaging in."
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"I really believe that if you want to live in a world that is forgiving and where people hold even those they disagree with to the same standards they wish to be held, you can’t cave to mob pressure as a means to protect yourself even when it would be a lot easier to do so," Nuzzi said. "That’s how this type of culture is formed and maintained and as individuals we get to decide if we think it’s worth enduring a little pain to fight against it."
Nuzzi wrote a bombshell story in New York Magazine about President Biden's mental decline. (STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
Additionally, Nuzzi told Fox News Digital she had not heard from Bloomberg since Semafor's report and added, "The only response I would like from Bloomberg is for them to show a little more courage in their future endeavors."
"Working Capital," which featured interviews with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Mark Cuban, concluded on August 15. It is unclear whether Nuzzi's show will be renewed for a second season. Bloomberg did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
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Nuzzi's shocking July report said the subject of Biden's mental decline "was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters." Nuzzi noted that she began hearing similar stories from "Democratic officials, activists, and donors" in January about concerns related to Biden’s age and cognitive ability.
"Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day? Uniformly, these people were of a similar social strata. They lived and socialized in Washington, New York, and Los Angeles. They did not wish to come forward with their stories. They did not want to blow a whistle," Nuzzi told readers.
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President Biden was pushed out of the presidential race following his dismal debate performance in June. (Michael Reynolds/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
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"Those who encountered the president in social settings sometimes left their interactions disturbed. Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names," Nuzzi wrote. "At a White House event last year, a guest recalled, with horror, realizing that the president would not be able to stay for the reception because, it was clear, he would not be able to make it through the reception. The guest wasn’t sure they could vote for Biden, since the guest was now open to an idea that they had previously dismissed as right-wing propaganda: The president may not really be the acting president after all."
The controversy over Biden's mental decline erupted following his disastrous debate performance in June and ultimately resulted in his exit from the presidential race, prompting Vice President Kamala Harris to quickly emerge as the Democratic nominee.
Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.