The Washington Post is discussed on The Bob Zadek Show chiefly as an example of a mainstream news organization with known political leanings, invoked by guests to sharpen arguments about other media. The excerpts do not describe the paper’s ownership, history or internal operations; they show it being used as a comparison, a target and a citation.
The Covington footage and doubling down
In the episode on crowds and tribalism, Bob Zadek describes a viral video of a confused, non-violent event involving three very different elements of society, and argues that mainstream media was instantly and unquestioningly on top of the story. He names David Brooks, a columnist he calls as close as the New York Times comes to a Republican columnist, and CNN, and says none of the media questioned the story, feeding the polarization in which everybody in America instantly picked sides. He asks Robbie Soave to describe, with a journalist’s critical eye, the role of mainstream media and how the public reacted to its reaction On Crowds and Tribalism (2019).
Soave says that for almost a full 24 hours nobody could get enough of the story, because in the Trump years everything was seen through a lens of Trump, with only two positions and two tribes, pro-Trump and anti-Trump. He says his own story, published Sunday afternoon, argued the media had wildly mischaracterized the event; that Nick Sandmann was not doing anything wrong; that the boys were engaged in pep-rally-type behavior as opposition to a crazy hate group; and that Nathan Phillips completely misrepresented what happened when he spoke to the media. He says the piece became the most-read article he had written at Reason, and that many in the media reversed course, including Jake Tapper of CNN, who tweeted the article, and Meghan McCain, who discussed it on The View.
Not everyone reversed course. Soave says that because the story had to fit a pro-Trump or anti-Trump narrative, conservatives began touting the students as examples of partisan bias in the media while others on the left doubled down, asserting that the new account was spin. He names Jonathan Capehart in the Washington Post, whom he describes as a left-of-center columnist, and Adam Serwer in the Atlantic, as among those who doubled down, along with a widely read piece in Deadspin that called Soave a professional contrarian On Crowds and Tribalism (2019).
The Post as a known quantity
Frank Buckley invokes the Washington Post twice in the episode on censoring the censors, both times as a contrast to Facebook. Asked by Zadek whether a federal agency that says Facebook is biased would also study MSNBC or Fox, Buckley raises the specter of what used to be called the Fairness Doctrine, which he says was abolished in 1988 and required both sides to be presented on talk radio, and says it was only after that that Zadek and Rush Limbaugh got started. He then distinguishes the Washington Post from Facebook: everyone knows about the Post, knows it has its own political biases, and if you get the Post, that is just what you are getting. The difference with Facebook, he says, is that people thought it was politically neutral and now have a sense that it is not, so their expectations have been dashed. He says his proposal would not affect MSNBC or the Post because they are not in play and we all know where they are coming from; it concerns organizations thought to be important and politically neutral Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019).
Earlier in the same episode, Buckley makes the comparison directly. He tells Zadek that he gets the Washington Post in the mornings and that, like a lot of newspapers, it is all about the horrors of Donald Trump, in every part of the paper including the weather section and the sports news. But that, he says, is the Post, and if he wants a different voice he can get on a platform like Zadek’s show or look at another site such as Reason. The point is that he can choose. What changed with Facebook, in his account, is that people used to think Facebook and Twitter were politically neutral, not like the Post or an organization with a definite view that could be filtered out, but purely objective stuff, the raw data from friends; then it seemed to people that some voices were being suppressed. The choice, as he frames it, is to think of Facebook like the Washington Post, a private company that can do whatever it wants, or to think of it as more like a public utility, the model favored by those who thought the social media giants really were politically neutral and now feel betrayed Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019).
Zadek’s own framing in that episode is that Facebook, if it makes a marketing decision to be biased, is making an economic decision that does not threaten the country, and that Fox and MSNBC make a marketing decision to appeal to a subset, unlike C-SPAN, which he calls unbiased and just provides information. He asks Buckley what the future of social media bias is if nothing is done, if the Hawley bill does not pass and people do not adopt the Buckley commission Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019).
The Post as a marker of a platform’s politics
In the episode on the Capitol riot in context, the Washington Post appears once, in a remark by Nick Gillespie. Discussing unstable majorities and the parties’ extremes, Gillespie says that if Joe Biden pushes his agenda, which the Washington Post of all places said was the most liberal platform that any Democrat has ever run on, the Republicans will be back in power in 2022 or 2024. The aside — of all places — treats the Post as a publication whose judgment carries a particular weight or surprise value when it characterizes a Democratic platform as liberal The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
The surrounding argument in that episode concerns parties rather than newspapers. Zadek says the extremes of both parties aspire to a muscular government and that the tool of choice is power; Gillespie agrees that government has not become smaller under Republican rule and calls this one of the great failures of Donald Trump. Gillespie cites the political scientist Morris Fiorina of Stanford on unstable majorities since the beginning of the 21st century, and he and Zadek discuss parties as marketing cooperatives cobbled together to reach 50.1 percent. Zadek says the only reason there are two parties is that parties have captured decision-making through control of the debates and ballot access, and that when Facebook does this it gets an antitrust attack, but when parties do it, it is fine The Capitol Riot in Context (2021).
Across episodes: no development
The Washington Post is touched on in three episodes — the 2019 episode on crowds and tribalism, the 2019 episode on censoring the censors, and the 2021 episode on the Capitol riot in context — and the excerpts show no development in how it is treated: it serves throughout as a known partisan reference point, named by Robbie Soave as the outlet of a columnist who doubled down, by Frank Buckley as the paper whose biases are plain and avoidable, and by Nick Gillespie as a surprising source on the liberalism of a Democratic platform.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts say nothing about the Washington Post’s founding, ownership, location, staffing or editorial process, and nothing about its reporting beyond the columns and characterizations named by the speakers. No excerpt states a date for the paper’s establishment or describes a policy it adopted. The only Post-affiliated person named is Jonathan Capehart, identified by Soave as a left-of-center columnist.