The Daily Beast is referenced in The Bob Zadek Show as a publication in which two of the program’s guests placed written work. In the excerpts, it is not described as an organization with a stated founding date, ownership, editorial line or institutional history; it appears only as the venue named for specific articles and for one guest’s column.
Anthony L. Fisher’s articles
In the October 2017 episode on Antifa and neo-reaction, Bob Zadek introduced guest Anthony L. Fisher by saying that Fisher had recently written a piece in the Daily Beast titled “Why Antifa Nazi Punching is Just a Gift to the Right.” Zadek characterized Fisher’s thesis as being that when the anti-fascist movement resorts to violence to suppress or oppose the alt-right, it becomes violence begets violence begets violence, and the point of all of it is kind of lost Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017).
Fisher himself returned to the article later in the episode. He said he had been invited on Al Jazeera after writing the article that Zadek had mentioned in the Daily Beast, where he was invited to debate two self-professed Antifa activists, one British and one Italian, and also Mark Bray, whom Fisher described as a Dartmouth adjunct lecturer and the author of a recently published book called Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook. Fisher said the book was to date the word on the Antifa movement and its history going back more than 100 years Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017).
Fisher also said that after that debate he read Mark Bray’s book and then wrote a review of it in the Daily Beast. In describing what he took from the book, Fisher said the movement does not just define itself as anti-fascist but proposes what it calls a “radical socialist revolutionary alternative.” He said this was the same stuff that we have always heard—that this time socialism is going to be the real deal, that it will not devolve into starvation or genocide or dictatorship or cult of personality, and that this time it will actually be egalitarian Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017).
In the same episode, Fisher stated that in his Daily Beast article he had full-throatedly said that Antifa and Nazis are not equivalent, and that far-right violence is completely demonstrable—that the far right has killed more people, hurt more people, and produced more violent incidents than the far left in the United States. He said he nevertheless felt the tactic was wrong and the movement misguided Anthony L. Fisher on Antifa Violence & Neo-Reaction (2017).
Robbie Soave’s column
In the January 2019 episode on crowds and tribalism, Zadek introduced guest Robbie Soave as an associate editor at Reason.com, a columnist at the Daily Beast, and a writer for the New York Times, New York Post, CNN, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report. Zadek also said Forbes named Soave in 2016 in its “30 Under 30” category in law and policy, and that Soave had broken one of the most interesting stories in recent times, the UVA fake rape case On Crowds and Tribalism (2019).
Soave’s own account of that story concerned Rolling Stone rather than the Daily Beast. He said the story was a piece of journalism produced by the magazine Rolling Stone, written by a freelancer for them, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, about sexual assault at the University of Virginia. Soave described the account given by a young woman identified as Jackie: that as a freshman at UVA she had gone on a date, that her date took her to a fraternity party and lured her upstairs, and that she was ritualistically gang-raped by about ten men, the fraternity brothers, dragged through glass and treated like an animal as part of what was described as an initiation ceremony. Soave said it turned out none of it was true, that the author had not forced Jackie to divulge the name of the person she was on a date with, that the author did not verify that this person existed and did not try to interview Jackie’s friends, and that the friends eventually revealed Jackie had been “catfishing” them—making up a fake identity and sending messages pretending to be someone else. Soave said the party did not happen, that there was no party at that fraternity on that day, and that Rolling Stone’s reputation was largely ruined afterward; the fraternity members sued and the Dean of Students sued for being misrepresented On Crowds and Tribalism (2019).
Across episodes
Two episodes touch on the Daily Beast: the October 2017 episode with Anthony L. Fisher, where the publication is the venue for his Antifa article and his review of Mark Bray’s book, and the January 2019 episode with Robbie Soave, where Zadek identifies Soave as a Daily Beast columnist. The excerpts show no development in how the publication is treated between the two—it is named as a place where guests publish, and nothing in the later episode revisits or revises the earlier characterization.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state when the Daily Beast was founded, who owns or edits it, where it is based, or what its editorial stance is. They do not say whether Fisher’s Antifa article and his book review were commissioned pieces, opinion pieces or reported journalism, nor do they give the review’s title. They do not describe any response by the Daily Beast to either article, and they do not say what Soave writes about in his column for the publication.