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Olivia Reingold is an American journalist and reporter for The Free Press . [1] [2]
An editor has nominated this article for deletion. You are welcome to participate in the deletion discussion , which will decide whether or not to retain it. |
Olivia Reingold is an American journalist and reporter for The Free Press . [1] [2]
Reingold graduated from Oglethorpe University with a Bachelor of Arts and from Columbia University Journalism School. [3] [4] She served as a Report for America corps member from 2019 to 2020, based at Yellowstone Public Radio. [3] She previously served as co-creator and executive producer for Matthew Yglesias’s podcast, Bad Takes. [5]
Reingold joined as a staff writer at The Free Press in 2022 after cold emailing founder Bari Weiss. [6] [7] In her role, she has become a frequent commentator on Fox Business . [8] [9] [10] [11]
On August 13, 2025 in an internal company interview posted on Instagram, Reingold responded to the question "When did you realize you were a Free Presser?" with ""When I was reporting for [bleeped] on President Trump and they inserted the word 'racist' into the headline", referring to an NPR piece she had written on Trump's comments encouraging four freshman democratic congresswomen, including three natural born Americans, "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." [12] [13] [14]
On August 17, 2025, Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova published "They Became Symbols for Gazan Starvation. But All 12 Suffer from Other Health Problems.", an investigation into photos published by international media outlets showing emaciated children in Gaza, noting that the children featured had pre-existing medical conditions, including cerebral palsy, cystic fibrosis, and traumatic head injury, including one by an "Israeli shell explosion". [15] [16] Descriptions of the children were subsequently updated to reflect this in The Washington Post and CNN. [17] [18]
On August 18, 2025, Reingold subsequently claimed in a video posted to The Free Press's TikTok account that as part of their research, they took the names of children who had been featured, including Najwa Hussein Hajjaj, put their name into Google Translate and searched the Arabic spelling to find local press coverage where parents described her medical conditions, including an esophagus condition. [19] [14] Reingold noted that "no other journalist bothered to do it", regarding this level of investigation, despite admitting the child's esophagus condition was reported in prior The New York Times reporting. [20] [19] [14] This clip was subsequently reposted by official social media accounts of Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu with the caption "Facts matter >>>" and by the Consulate-General of Israel in Miami. [21] [22]
Reingold's coverage of starvation among children in Gaza attracted criticism from Krystal Ball, co-host of Breaking Points , and Ben Rhodes, former deputy national security adviser under the Obama Administration, who described the article as "sociopathic" and grotesque". [23] [24] [25] On August 18, 2025, Jack Mirkinson, senior editor at The Nation and co-founder of Discourse Blog, characterized The Free Press's co-founder Bari Weiss as using her site to deny starvation in Gaza, writing "Everyone with eyes can see that there is a starvation crisis in Gaza, and that it has been caused by Israel. But, for months, Weiss has been using her Free Press site to posit the theory, “uh, what if all of that is a lie?” And now, along with her collaborators, she has brought things to a place that is despicable even for her—that takes her baseline of evil and yanks it up to levels only rarely before seen.". [26]
The article also drew condemnation from president of Refugees International Jeremy Konyndyk, who wrote on X that "This is such a weird & disturbing take. Rising mortality among people with health complications is not a disproof of famine - it's a typical phase in a famine trajectory. People with otherwise non-fatal diseases and health issues often starve first....that's how famine works." [23]
On August 25, 2025, The Free Press ran an editorial titled "Journalists Against Journalism" defending Reingold and Lukyanova's reporting. [27] [28] The editors wrote "We are proud of the report and the reporters who tracked it down. In doing so, Olivia Reingold and Tanya Lukyanova performed a public service by asking and answering a simple question: In a moment of widespread charges by international institutions and news outlets about hunger in Gaza, are these photographs representative? More: How is it that journalists failed to scrutinize information coming out of a war zone with an active terrorist group conducting kinetic and information warfare?" [27] [28]
In a August 26, 2025 articles in The Telegraph titled "Seven common tropes used to deny Gaza’s famine, debunked by an expert", Konyndyk challenged the notion that "That starving person has a pre-existing condition, so it’s not real starvation", writing: "This line of argument is as callous as it is inaccurate. People with underlying conditions always suffer first when hunger sets in. That vulnerability is not a rebuttal of famine; it is a feature of how famine kills and who it hits first. And in any case – we should not accept starvation-with-complications as somehow acceptable." [29]
During an October 12, 2025 Last Week Tonight with John Oliver segment on Bari Weiss, Oliver challenged Reingold's article's claim of how the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) "quietly changed its methodology in Gaza, essentially redefining the criteria for determining a famine." as false. [14] [30] [31] [32] Oliver noted the IPC usage of arm circumference measurements, which is easier to obtain than height and weight of children during wartime, had been accepted since 2019, and had previously been uses to classify famines in South Sudan and Sudan. [33] [14]
In a July 2025 interview with Fox Business, Reingold characterized Democratic nominee for Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani as 'extremely radical". [34]
On September 27, 2025, Reingold published a piece titled "NYPD Cops: ‘I Will Quit If Zohran Is Elected’", which was criticized for using anonymous sources for all the police officers interviewed. [35] [36] [37]
Following the October 2025 acquisition of The Free Press by Paramount, and Bari Weiss's appointment as editor in chief of CBS News , on October 10, 2025 CBS News posted a piece titled "Some NYPD officers worry about Mamdani becoming the NYC mayor, The Free Press reports," focusing on Reingold's article. [37] [38] The New Republic criticized the reporting as "thinly sourced, fearmongering, tabloid drek", noting the lack of named sources and the . [39]