The Wall Street Journal is referenced across five episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case as an outside institution invoked in the course of an argument rather than as a topic examined on its own. The paper appears variously as a publication Bob Zadek reads, as the publisher of a book review and of an op-ed by a guest, as an outlet that declined to report a fraud story, and as the employer of a guest. No episode in the excerpts treats the Journal’s ownership, editorial page, or reporting practices as a subject in itself.
As a source Bob Zadek reads
In the 2021 episode on the corporate income tax, Bob Zadek introduces Richard Rubin as the US tax policy reporter for the Wall Street Journal in Washington, noting that Rubin focuses on taxes, politics, and economics. Zadek tells listeners that through a process of attrition the Wall Street Journal has become the only provider of objective news he allows access to his brain, that he has culled the herd and the paper is the last media outlet standing, and that he relies heavily on information from it in making his personal decisions. He adds that he relies specifically on Rubin as his tax tutor. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
The same episode’s introduction describes the discussion as covering the complexities and misconceptions surrounding the corporate income tax, including who bears its burden, proposals such as the global minimum tax, and the tax strategies of companies such as Amazon. Auditing the Corporate Income Tax (2021)
Earlier, in the 2009 episode on hate crimes legislation, Zadek argues that people who commit crimes of impulse probably do not consult criminal defense counsel beforehand and probably do not read the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal or the Federal Register every day. The reference is incidental to his argument that an enhanced sentence is not in the offender’s calculation. Hate Crimes Legislation (2009)
The Equity Funding episode
The most extended treatment of the Journal in the excerpts comes in the 2009 episode on insider trading, in Zadek’s account of Ray Dirks and Equity Funding. Zadek describes Dirks as a hardworking stockbroker in the 1970s who received a call from a man named Secrest, an employee of a life insurance company called Equity Funding whose stock was rising. According to Zadek, Secrest was angry at having been shorted on his Christmas bonus and told Dirks the company was a fraud, that employees came in on weekends to write phony policies to satisfy regulators and auditors, and that the scheme involved the Mafia, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
In Zadek’s telling, Dirks investigated, concluded it was a fraud, and called the Wall Street Journal. The Journal responded, in Zadek’s paraphrase, that the company was publicly traded, that the information was all hearsay, and that the paper did not want to go public yet. Dirks then went to the SEC, which Zadek says would not move, treating the matter as a rumor from a disgruntled employee. Dirks told his institutional clients to sell Equity Funding; Zadek says Dirks made not a dime, the company blew up, and its president went to jail for about eight years. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
Zadek says the SEC censured Dirks for sharing inside material non-public information, that Dirks fought the censure up to the US Supreme Court, that Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General defended him against the SEC, and that the Supreme Court said Dirks did nothing wrong and the censure was removed ten years after it was imposed. Zadek adds that once the stock plummeted from 30 to 15 the SEC investigated, and that the Wall Street Journal then published the story because it was by then all over the trade press. Guest Don Boudreaux responds that Dirks saved his clients from losses and that his actions helped expose the fraud earlier than it would otherwise have been exposed. Legalize Insider Trading (2009)
The conservative-libertarian schism
In the 2014 episode with Damon Root, Zadek notes that the Wall Street Journal gave Root a wonderful review of his book and that the review took issue to some degree with Root’s use of the term “war” to describe the tension between conservatives and libertarians. Zadek asks Root about the fault line between the two camps on the role of the Supreme Court. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root answers that the conservative legal movement grew up in response to liberal court victories of the 1950s and 1960s under the Warren and Burger Courts and was modeled on the civil rights movement’s success through legal means; he describes it as extremely influential and in control of the Supreme Court. Zadek suggests the Federalist Society is perhaps the point organization in this, and Root agrees it is a key organization. Root describes a libertarian insurgency within the broader movement that disagrees with conservatives on the role of the courts, and identifies the fault line as the question of whether courts should defer to the elected branches. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root cites privacy as a key conservative concern, noting that the right to privacy is unenumerated, that in 1965 the Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law banning the sale of birth control to married couples, and that a few years later the Court found a right to abortion within that privacy right. He says conservatives regard those opinions as untethered from the text of the Constitution, and that Justice Scalia held to that line consistently. Root says the libertarian legal movement disagrees, holding that a right to privacy is in the Constitution and that the state should not prevent married couples from obtaining birth control. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root adds that Scalia, Robert Bork, and John Roberts apply a deferential philosophy in economic regulation cases as well, treating economic rights and unenumerated rights alike as second-class, and that libertarians disagree. He notes that Scalia debated libertarian law professors over whether the Constitution requires courts to protect economic liberty, and that Scalia said it does not. Root says the healthcare case of 2012 raised whether Congress had authority under the Commerce Clause to impose the individual mandate, that Randy Barnett was an architect of the challenge, that Barnett argued a medical marijuana case at the Supreme Court in 2005 and lost, and that Scalia and Kennedy voted against him there. Zadek calls that decision terrible and names it as the Raich case. Root says that seven years later Barnett’s arguments had become the default conservative position. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Root also says Michael Greve wrote the review for the Wall Street Journal and that Greve appeared to concede in it that libertarians had gained considerable ground. Zadek says the libertarian movement is intellectually alive and that when you get to frame the debate you have in effect won. Root agrees, citing gun control and the healthcare debate as areas where the traditional conservative view of deference has fallen out of favor on the right. Overruling Government Overreach: Damon Root on the Libertarian Legal Movement (2014)
Overcriminalization
In the 2015 episode with Brian Walsh, Zadek introduces Walsh as having recently written a piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Time to Arrest the Federal Criminalization Spree.” Zadek describes 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.” “You’re Under Arrest!”: Overcriminalization with Brian Walsh (2015)
Walsh says the piece was prompted by good news: a number of organizations, including the Heritage Foundation where he used to work and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, had been working for about a dozen years on Capitol Hill to get Congress to act more circumspectly when creating new criminal laws. He says the new House of Representatives adopted a rules change proposed about eight years earlier that makes it more likely the House Judiciary Committee will oversee all new criminalization, whereas previously new and modified criminal laws in almost every bill floated through every committee. He says federal criminal law has exploded over the past 40 to 50 years in particular and that Congress is well past time to rein it in and make it more understandable for the average person. “You’re Under Arrest!”: Overcriminalization with Brian Walsh (2015)
Zadek frames the episode by noting that the federal government has not one but hundreds of various federal police forces, even though the founders envisioned a federal government with no police force whatsoever, and asks how we got here and how we get out. “You’re Under Arrest!”: Overcriminalization with Brian Walsh (2015)
Across episodes
The Journal recurs across the 2009 insider-trading episode, the 2014 episode with Damon Root, the 2015 episode with Brian Walsh, and the 2021 episode with Richard Rubin, but the excerpts show no development in how it is treated: in each case it is cited in passing — as a paper that declined a story, as the publisher of a review and an op-ed, and as an employer — rather than examined as an institution. The 2009 hate-crimes episode mentions it only in a list of publications an impulsive offender would not read.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the Wall Street Journal’s ownership, editorial leadership, founding, or editorial page positions, and they do not state where it is published. They do not report the outcome of the Equity Funding coverage beyond Zadek’s statement that the paper published the story after the stock fell, nor do they give the title or author of the review of Damon Root’s book beyond Zadek’s attribution to Michael Greve. Richard Rubin’s remarks in the 2021 episode are not included in the excerpts, so his own account of the Journal and of tax policy is absent.