Zadekpedia[[organizations/wall-street-journal|The Wall Street Journal]] is invoked across The Bob Zadek Show as a publication, a venue for guests’ own writing, and a symbol of media authority. The excerpts do not examine the paper’s ownership, editorial line, or reporting practices; they show it being cited, praised, and in one case described as the last outlet the host trusts.
As a venue for guests’ arguments
In a 2015 episode on overcriminalization, Bob Zadek introduces Brian Walsh by noting that Walsh “has recently written a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled” “Time to Arrest the Federal Criminalization Spree.” Zadek repeats the title when asking Walsh what prompted the piece, and Walsh explains it was prompted by a House rules change, proposed about eight years earlier, that would give the House Judiciary Committee oversight of new criminalization rather than letting criminal laws float through every committee. “You’re Under Arrest!”: Overcriminalization with Brian Walsh (2015)
The same episode has Zadek describe Walsh as an executive director of the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s American Religious Freedom Program and as the author, with Heritage, of “One Nation Under Arrest: How Crazy Laws, Rogue Prosecutors, and Activist Judges Threaten Your Liberty.” The Journal piece is treated as one item in that record, not as an object of analysis.
As a source the host trusts
In a 2021 episode on the corporate income tax, Zadek tells guest Richard Rubin that “through a process of attrition, the Wall Street Journal has become the only provider of objective news that I allow to have access to my brain.” He says he has “culled the herd” and that the Journal is “the last media outlet standing,” and that he relies heavily on its information for personal decisions. Rubin is introduced as the Journal’s US tax policy reporter in Washington, focusing on taxes, politics, and economics; Zadek notes Rubin previously covered tax policy at Bloomberg and the Congressional Quarterly, wrote about local governments and transportation policy, and began his career with the Charlotte Observer. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
The same episode’s framing describes the discussion as covering who bears the burden of the corporate income tax, the global minimum tax, and the tax strategies of companies like Amazon, with Janet Yellen named among the topics.
In the Dirks story
In a 2009 episode on insider trading, Zadek recounts that Ray Dirks, a stockbroker in the 1970s, was tipped by a man named Secrest that Equity Funding, a life insurance company, was a fraud. Dirks investigated, then called the Wall Street Journal, which said the company was publicly traded, the information was hearsay, and it did not want to go public yet. Dirks went to the SEC, which also would not move. He told his institutional clients to sell; the stock fell, the fraud was exposed, and the president went to jail. Zadek says the SEC censured Dirks for sharing inside material non-public information, that Dirks fought the censure to the US Supreme Court, that Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General defended him against the SEC, and that the Court said Dirks did nothing wrong and removed the censure ten years after it was imposed. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
Later in the same exchange, Zadek says that once the stock plummeted from 30 to 15, the SEC investigated, and then the Wall Street Journal published the story because it was all over the trade press. Don Boudreaux responds that Dirks saved his clients from losses and helped expose the fraud earlier than it would otherwise have been exposed.
As a symbol of a lost media era
In a 2021 episode on the Capitol riot, Zadek says that for most of his intellectual life his day started with the daily newspaper — every day The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal — and that he watched the evening news. He says that in 2021 his household has taken a solemn oath not to watch the news, and that news has become entertainment measured by whether it excites fear or anger rather than by whether it makes viewers smarter or more informed. The excerpt breaks off mid-sentence as he develops the point. The Capitol Riot in Context (2021)
Across episodes
The Journal appears in episodes from 2009, 2015, and 2021, but the episodes show no development: in 2009 it is a publication that declined to run the Equity Funding story until the trade press had it; in 2015 it is where a guest’s op-ed ran; in 2021 it is the host’s last trusted outlet and a fixture of a media habit he says he has abandoned. No excerpt has the paper as its subject.