ZadekpediaOverview
The New York Post is described across these episodes as a tabloid published in New York City and, in Bob Zadek’s account, the oldest newspaper in the country, a claim he himself calls vaguely irrelevant to his point Checking in on Bail Reform (2022). Zadek also states that the paper is 200 years old and was founded by Alexander Hamilton Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020). The paper enters the show in several distinct roles: as the outlet that first published the Hunter Biden laptop story, as the subject of a Twitter suppression episode, as Zadek’s confessed daily reading habit, and as an employer of guests and a source cited by guests.
The Hunter Biden laptop story
Zadek recounts that the New York Post released a story relating to Hunter Biden’s laptop, left at a pawn shop, which found its way to Rudy Giuliani and to DOJ; DOJ found emails on it that could be politically damaging to Joe Biden and to Hunter, and that were believed could profoundly affect election results Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020). The Post released the information on its Twitter feed, and Twitter then blocked it, asserting the material was hacked and violated its policy; Twitter later apologized. Zadek characterizes this as Twitter censoring the Post’s release of the information, and notes that it caused Jack Dorsey and others to be dragged before Congress, where Ted Cruz publicly scolded Dorsey and asked, “Who elected you, Mr. Dorsey?” Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).
In a later episode Zadek returns to the same sequence, describing the Twitter Files as showing that the FBI was in close contact with Twitter and suggesting the laptop story, first released by the New York Post, a tabloid in New York City, may have been hacked material Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023). He frames the platform’s position as a choice that was not a choice, and asks whether the government and Twitter were behaving badly and what the constitutional implications are.
Censorship and editorial judgment
Zadek uses the Post as an analogy for ordinary editorial discretion. He observes that everyone knows and does not mind that a newspaper publishing letters to the editor decides which ones to publish, and that nobody minds if mainstream media selects who gets a letter published Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023). What is different about social media, he argues, is a profound difference in degree: the magnitude of users and the effect of amplifying some material and suppressing others. He describes Twitter as doing on steroids what media has always done since there has been media.
Crime coverage and bail reform
Zadek opens an episode on bail reform with a confession that the first thing he does each morning is read the online app for the New York Post Checking in on Bail Reform (2022). He describes the paper’s daily pattern: an article begins with a violent crime committed in New York City and then points out that the alleged perpetrator was previously arrested and released without bail by a judge the Post considers a ne’er-do-well, with the judge often named. He says the Post complains bitterly that the bad actor with a long rap sheet and a history of violent crime was not held for the prior crime, and that had the perpetrator not been released, the later crime would not have been committed. Zadek says he is berated and starts his day grouchy because of these articles but cannot stop reading.
As a source and an employer
The Post also appears as a publication whose writers are guests and whose reporting is cited. Zadek introduces Frank Buckley as a columnist for the New York Post and says Buckley’s Post writing will be the subject of the episode, specifically a recent column titled “How to Stop the Woke Social Media Censors” Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019). Buckley’s argument, as Zadek summarizes it, is that the problem of censorship in social media should be fixed by creating another government agency. In the parental-freedom episode, Lenore Skenazy credits Andrea Peyser of the New York Post with doing the numbers showing that a person is more in danger walking across a parking lot than waiting in a car, and that more children have died in parking lots and driveways than while waiting in cars Lenore Skenazy: World’s Worst Mom (2014). Christian Britschgi is introduced as having written for the New York Post among other publications Free to Build (2023).
Across episodes
The Hunter Biden laptop story is the thread that recurs: it is discussed in the 2020 episode on trustbusting as a Twitter suppression incident leading to congressional testimony, and again in the 2023 episode on The Infodemic, where Zadek adds the Twitter Files account of FBI contact with Twitter and frames the platform’s compliance as a Hobson’s choice. The later treatment adds the government-pressure dimension absent from the earlier one; both are advanced by Zadek rather than by a guest. The bail-reform episode treats the Post’s crime coverage as a framing device rather than as a censorship case, and the Skenazy and Britschgi episodes mention the paper only in passing.