Journalist's Substack Series Challenges Legacy Media on Truth

Key Quotes

"I realized that the only way to do it to the extent that it was important to do was i had to finally you know tell it myself once i saw that piece once i saw the excerpt once i learned about the book i realized oh my god like not only did she like blow me up with these insane accusations and like abuse a domestic violence court in washington at the behest of a top trump candidate official although he wasn't an official just yet but now she's written a book with information about me that is false because one of the things that happened in that conversation with jacob is he wanted to get my response to something she had published in the book i explained to jacob why that accusation was false he was satisfied with what i explained to him and he removed it"

Ryan Lizza explains that after seeing a New York Times piece and learning about Olivia Nuzzi's book, he felt compelled to tell his side of the story. Lizza believed the book contained false information and that the New York Times piece, despite his explanations, would be a "puffy profile" that would humiliate the publication. This realization led him to decide he had to publish his own account.

"The choice ben was between letting a book that attacked me with false and defamatory claims go unresponded to as the author you know presumably does a media tour and additionally leave the accusations of a year ago in court a us superior court in washington dc leave those on addressed i never responded to them i did what you said earlier i put out a statement and moved and moved on yeah i moved on so ben i don't know if you've ever been accused of blackmail i don't know if you've ever falsely been accused of threatening violence against your fiancé or a number of other criminal accusations that she at the behest of our current hhs secretary made in a court in dc and then abandoned all the claims without ever putting forward a single shred of evidence then wrote a 300 page book about the entire drama and never again alleged any of those things because she knew that she could get away with filing that in a court where you can't sue someone for defamation but she couldn't do it in a book so she said a lot of things that i let go right and i thought we were going to move on and live our lives and then she wrote a book"

Ryan Lizza articulates his dilemma: either remain silent about false and defamatory claims made in a book and in court, or respond fully. Lizza highlights the severity of the accusations, including blackmail and threats of violence, which were filed in court and then abandoned without evidence. He felt that after Nuzzi wrote a book that reiterated some of these claims, he had to correct the record.

"I tried to write it for politico that didn't work out for reasons i explained i went to the publisher of avid reader press sat down for like a two hour lunch at the harvard club and explained just about everything that i ended up writing in the bamboo series and i thought okay these guys now know that they've got like a stephen glass jason blair person in their midst they should go do some due diligence and then that never happened so simon and schuster knew just about everything that i've i've published i laid out that entire story for them okay the new york times knew the night before they published that story i told them everything politico knew they never pursued the story and vanity fair should have known i told sean mccreesh everything you know sean mccreesh is the boyfriend of the editor of vanity fair and instead of warning him like hey this person's you know ex fiancé says that she was doing catch and kill operations for kennedy sean recommended her for the job by the time the new york times thing happened i'm like fuck i've got to do this myself if to the extent that i care about the real story coming out and so yeah that's what happened"

Ryan Lizza details his attempts to get his story published through other outlets before resorting to Substack. He explains that Politico did not pursue the story, and a publisher at Avid Reader Press (associated with Simon & Schuster) was informed of the details but apparently did not conduct due diligence. Lizza also notes that he informed The New York Times and Vanity Fair, suggesting that these outlets were aware of his account before publishing Nuzzi's.

"The truth in my view won out that's an important media lesson with our fragmented landscape and declining trust in media you can still find an audience if you tell the truth"

Ryan Lizza reflects on his Substack series and its impact compared to Olivia Nuzzi's book and the media support it received. Lizza posits that despite the resources behind Nuzzi's book, his Substack series, which he frames as presenting "the truth," ultimately cut through the "bullshit." He concludes that in today's media environment, telling the truth is still a viable strategy for reaching an audience.

"On the one hand it's like well you know fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me there was a certain amount of that and i think i've been appropriately criticized by a lot of people for giving her a second chance for trying to repair our relationship for trying to like dig ourselves out of that insane drama but i genuinely you know thought that there were some sort of weird circumstances that led to that thing with sanford and we did a lot of you know work to kind of move past it i was wrong i was obviously very wrong and by that point i woke up and just realized i didn't really know this person this person lived a double life for a year"

Ryan Lizza discusses the personal impact of discovering a pattern of behavior, referencing a previous incident with Mark Sanford. He acknowledges being criticized for giving Nuzzi a second chance after the Sanford situation, admitting he was wrong and that he realized he did not truly know her. Lizza describes this realization as waking up to the fact that she had been living a "double life."