The LA Times is referenced across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, never as a topic in its own right but as a source of reported facts and as an institution whose power and incentives are used to illustrate arguments about markets, speech and regulation.
As a source of reported facts
In the episode on statewide rent caps, the guest cites the paper for a statistic on California housing: nine of the fifteen metropolitan areas with the highest median home values are in California, a figure the guest attributes to the LA Times. The citation is deployed to support the argument that the states copying Oregon’s rent-cap legislation are those with the worst housing situations, and that the policy is spreading despite — or because of — that record. The Rent Control Bomb (2019)
In the episode on California’s SB 1383, the guest cites a LA Times article from December that outlines the law’s requirements, quoting it for the proposition that supermarkets and other big food providers must divert as much as a quarter of edible food now destined for dumps and landfills to food banks to feed the needy. A separate statewide goal of recovering 20% of edible food by 2025 is attributed to Reuters rather than the LA Times. Food (Waste) Freedom (2022)
As a benchmark of concentrated media power
The most sustained treatment of the paper comes in the episode with Eugene Volokh on criminal memes, where the LA Times serves as the concrete example of the pre-internet media order. Volokh’s argument is that the concerns now voiced about lies, invasion of privacy and supposed fake news stem from the democratization of the media marketplace. Forty years earlier, he suggests, pernicious material distributed in leaflets would reach a narrow audience and cost money to print and distribute, and a newspaper asked to publish it would decline on grounds of deception, reputation and ethics.
Libel and defamation follow the same pattern. Volokh notes that someone can now post damaging material about a person on a webpage or gossip site, where it surfaces on a Google search. He observes that he personally has a wide Google footprint from years of writing online, which makes it harder to damage him this way, but that for most people — those without much about them online and with an unusual name — reputation can be badly damaged very inexpensively. Against this he sets the LA Times: before, the paper could badly damage your reputation, but only a very few entities had the power to do so and only a very few might be interested in you. Second, for all that is said about the mainstream media, they have pretty substantial incentives not to be known as people who just spread around lies about people. Among other things, if the LA Times damaged your reputation, you could sue them, and hard as it is to win a libel case, you might be able to win it and then they would pay because they have deep pockets — and even if they themselves do not, they have an insurance company that will pay for the damages. Criminal Memes: The Ballad of Ricky Vaughn (2021)
Volokh frames this contrast with the line, quoted from his new article published on the 25th anniversary of his original one, “Oligarchy, how quickly we have come to miss you.” He is explicit that he does not miss it, but thinks some people do, at least as to some aspects. The LA Times is the named embodiment of the oligarchy in question: an entity with the practical power to destroy a reputation, the deep pockets to answer for it in court, and institutional incentives against casual lying.
Across episodes
The three episodes do not develop a single argument about the LA Times; they use it for different purposes. In the rent-control episode it supplies a housing statistic; in the food-waste episode it supplies a description of SB 1383’s requirements; in the Volokh episode it is the named example of the old media oligarchy whose passing Volokh both welcomes and, in the quoted line, half-mourns. What changes between the earlier and later treatments is the role assigned to the paper — from cited authority to object of analysis — but the excerpts show no argument advanced about the paper itself across episodes, and no participant returns to a claim made about it in an earlier show.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the paper’s founding date, ownership, headquarters city, circulation or editorial stance, and they do not describe any LA Times article beyond the two cited for their factual content. No guest or host discusses the paper’s coverage of rent control or food waste as journalism rather than as a source of quoted figures. The Volokh discussion treats the paper hypothetically — what it could do to a reputation and what incentives it faces — rather than reporting any actual LA Times libel suit or coverage decision.