The New York Post is discussed across several episodes of The Bob Zadek Show in three distinct roles: as a newspaper whose reporting is cited as evidence, as the outlet that published the Hunter Biden laptop story, and as an employer of guests and columnists. No episode treats the paper as its own subject; it surfaces as a source, a protagonist in a media controversy, and a biographical detail about speakers.
The paper described
Bob Zadek calls the New York Post a tabloid in New York City and the oldest newspaper in the country, a claim he offers with the caveat that he may be mistaken and that it is vaguely irrelevant to his point Checking in on Bail Reform (2022). In a later episode he again calls it a tabloid in New York City [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]. In the 2020 episode on antitrust and big tech, he describes the paper as a 200-year-old paper founded by Alexander Hamilton, adding that Hamilton was made famous by the musical for anyone who had not otherwise heard of him Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020).
The paper’s opinion pages supply at least one guest. Bob introduces Frank Buckley as a senior editor at the American Spectator and a columnist for the New York Post, and says Buckley’s New York Post writing will be the subject of that morning’s show Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019). Christian Britschgi is introduced as an associate editor at Reason magazine who has written for the American Conservative, the New York Post, and the Wall Street Journal Free to Build (2023).
Crime coverage and bail reform
Bob Zadek opens the bail reform episode with a confession: the first thing he does on waking is read the online app for the New York Post on his iPhone Checking in on Bail Reform (2022). He describes the paper’s daily pattern — more than one article each day beginning with a violent crime committed in New York City and then noting that the alleged perpetrator had been arrested previously and released without bail by a judge the paper regards as a ne’er-do-well. He says the Post complains bitterly each time 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 judge not released the perpetrator, the later crime would not have been committed. He notes that the judge is often mentioned by name, and that the paper sometimes faults the system in general rather than an individual judge. He says the articles leave him grouchy but that he cannot stop reading.
The same episode’s framing notes describe the discussion as analyzing data from New York’s bail reforms and contrasting them with New Jersey’s algorithm-driven approach and recent changes in Harris County, Texas, with topics listed as bail reform, cash bail, the 8th Amendment, criminal justice, preventive detention, recidivism, New York law, and the New Jersey algorithm Checking in on Bail Reform (2022).
The Hunter Biden laptop story
The Post’s release of material relating to Hunter Biden’s laptop becomes a recurring case study in the show’s treatment of social media censorship. In the 2020 episode on trustbusting big tech, Bob Zadek recounts that the story came to light when the New York Post released a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop left at a pawn shop, that it found its way to Rudy Giuliani and to DOJ, and that DOJ found emails on it that could be politically damaging to Joe Biden and to Hunter. He says the New York Post released the information on its Twitter feed, that Twitter then blocked it, that Twitter later apologized, and that the episode caused Jack Dorsey and others to be dragged before Congress, where Ted Cruz publicly scolded Dorsey and asked who elected him Why Trustbusting Big Tech is a Bad Idea (2020). Bob characterizes Twitter’s action as censoring the New York Post release of that information, while noting that censored is the wrong word but conveys the meaning.
In the 2023 Life!Line episode, Bob returns to the same sequence, saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was first released by the New York Post, a tabloid in New York City, and that when it was first released the FBI and other governmental officials were suggesting to Twitter that it may have been hacked material [[episodes/life_line___guest_hosting__robert_mahoney_on__the|Life!Line - Guest hosting: Robert Mahoney on The Infodemic (2023)]]. He describes this as a wink and a nod indicating the FBI would look with great displeasure if Twitter published the story, and compares Twitter’s position to a choice that is not a choice — a dark alley, a gun at your head, your money and your life. He frames the question as whether the government was behaving badly, whether Twitter was behaving badly, and what the constitutional implications are.
The 2023 bail reform episode also references the laptop story in passing, with Bob noting that the Post has very short news stories, news in air quotes, although it did break the Hunter Biden laptop story during the last presidential election Checking in on Bail Reform (2022).
Cited as evidence
In the 2014 episode with Lenore Skenazy, the Post appears as a source of data rather than a subject. Skenazy gives kudos to Andrea Peyser of the New York Post, who did 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 have died while waiting in cars Lenore Skenazy: World’s Worst Mom (2014). The citation supports Skenazy’s argument that a five-to-ten-minute errand was not considered an endangerment in any earlier era, and that the danger of a child waiting in a car has been overstated relative to the hours-long cases in which parents forgot children all day at work.
Across episodes
The New York Post is touched on in five episodes spanning 2014 to 2023, and the excerpts show no development in how the paper is treated: it is consistently invoked as a tabloid in New York City whose reporting, opinion writing, and personnel are referenced in passing. The one thread that recurs is the Hunter Biden laptop story, discussed by Bob Zadek in the 2020 trustbusting episode and again in the 2023 Life!Line episode, with the later treatment adding the FBI’s alleged suggestion to Twitter that the material may have been hacked; both treatments are Bob’s framing rather than a guest’s argument, and no guest in the excerpts advances a competing account.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the New York Post’s founding date, its ownership, its circulation, or its editorial stance beyond the characterizations quoted above. They do not describe the paper’s coverage of any topic other than crime in New York City and the Hunter Biden laptop story, and they do not say what became of the laptop story after Twitter’s apology or whether any legal proceeding followed. The excerpts also do not state whether the Post’s bail coverage was accurate, only that Bob Zadek describes it and finds it grouchy-making.