The New York Times Goes Full Karen on Mark Zuckerberg
"They suspected the house was being used as a school," notes the Times, in a moment of high drama, "and they were right."
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a favorite punching bag of both the left and right. Over the course of the 2010s, he became an important funder of liberal causes, which earned him the perpetual ire of Republicans—even as Facebook itself remained a vital source of web traffic for right-of-center news sites.
Then, in 2016, Donald Trump got elected president, and progressives eventually landed on It's Facebook's fault as their preferred explanation for how this could have happened. It became commonplace to see mainstream headlines explicitly blaming Zuckerberg for allowing his social media site to platform and advertise Republican messaging. (Eight years prior, when Barack Obama successfully used Facebook to reach voters—including by hiring Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes to do digital outreach for the campaign—no one in the media had any problem with this. After it became apparent that non-Democrats could use Facebook, too, Hughes suddenly started advocating a breakup of the company.)
When Democrats seized upon the (now thoroughly debunked) notion that Russian ads and bots on Facebook had swung the election to Trump, the anti-Facebook fever pitch reached its apex. Meanwhile, Zuckerberg had not exactly endeared himself to Republicans: Developments in 2020 and 2021 further enraged the right, as the Hunter Biden laptop story and COVID-19 pandemic produced moderation decisions that conservatives correctly despised. This was the moment of greatest danger for Zuckerberg: Principled libertarian defenders of free markets were in retreat, and rising populism on both the left and right had threatened to make antitrust a reality for Facebook.
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Then, a few things happened that ultimately benefitted Zuckerberg. Most importantly, Facebook and other social media sites were able to demonstrate to conservatives that their egregiously bad moderation decisions were the result of federal interference, something libertarians had long opposed. Also, Zuckerberg learned how to punch back at Democrats, and MAGA's intrinsic dislike of him softened. Under the second Trump administration, Zuckerberg enjoys an occasionally fraught but much improved relationship with the president, which is broadly characteristic of other tech leaders. (Elon Musk has a combative relationship with Trump even though he loves the man.)
But the media still hates Zuck, which brings us to this week's story in The New York Times.
"Zuckerberg's Compound Had Something That Violated City Code: A Private School," writes the Times. The tone of the article matches the tone of the headline: pearl-clutching moral indignation. A private school—in violation of city code. The horror!
The situation is perfectly understandable: After the pandemic hit, Mr. and Mrs. Zuckerberg decided to enroll two of their daughters in a pod-based homeschool-type hybrid thing alongside a dozen other kids. (The Zuckerbergs are obscenely rich and own a massive compound in Palo Alto, California.) They hired staff, including teachers and an overseer, and made the whole thing free for the families of the other kids. After the pandemic came to an end, they decided that they would prefer to continue educating their children in this manner. The other families seem to like the deal too.
It seems obvious, but if this arrangement—a wealthy man setting up a school on his own property, paying teachers' salaries and making the whole thing free for a dozen other families—violates some city code, then the city code ought to be changed. Zuckerberg should have the right to use his own money to educate his children in a manner he sees fit.
Yet the Times gives star billing to unspecified complaints from neighbors, who found the morning and afternoon drop-offs and pick-ups disruptive for some reason.
"They suspected the house was being used as a school," notes the Times, in a moment of high drama, "and they were right."
It's true that the Zuckerbergs have been at odds with some of their neighbors for years, as they have purchased property after property in an attempt to turn their compound into a mini-fiefdom. I can certainly understand complaints about constant construction noises, but it's not ideal to let change-averse townies thwart development at all costs by weaponizing various government building approval systems.
By targeting the education of their children, though, hasn't The New York Times sided with Zuckerberg's enemies on the least sympathetic grounds? You would think they would realize that. Yet it seems they are aligned with liberal reporter Emily Shugerman, who treats the Karen-ing of the Zuckerbergs as some kind of well-deserved moral crusade.
absolutely stunning: at the same time Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan pulled funding from a free school for local kids, they were running a private school for their own children out of their house pic.twitter.com/k73SjnKBDU
— Emily Shugerman (@eshugerman) August 11, 2025
Her point above is stated as if she's caught the couple in a hypocrisy. In reality, there is nothing hypocritical about declining to continue providing money for someone else's education even as you continue you to vigorously fund your own children's education.
But anyone who reads the Times and comes away deeply concerned about the quality of education for non-Zuckerbergs should consider this proposition: There is a set of public policies that would allow families more choice and control over their kids' education—school choice reforms, which allocate public education dollars to individual students instead of schools. Under such a system, parents can take the per pupil funding that the state is spending on their child and spend the money on whatever educational option is best for them, be it a public school, a private school, homeschooling, or some hybrid of all of the above.
Not every kid is going to end up lucky enough to attend preschool for free at a Palo Alto mansion. But people with a sincere interest in improving educational outcomes for children should be seeking ways of encouraging this kind of experimentation, not attacking it in the pages of The New York Times.
This Week on Free Media
I'm joined by a special guest, The Hill's White House columnist Niall Stanage! Regular viewers of Robby-related media products will recognize Stanage from his many appearances on Rising. As expected, we had a rousing discussion of the week's major media topics: the federalization of D.C. police, Laura Loomer's latest crusade, Pete Buttigieg disappointing the left with his views on Israel, and much more.
Amber Duke will be back next week, but I'm looking forward to collaborating with Stanage more regularly, too, as Free Media expands. Onward!
Worth Watching
After failing for two weeks to come up with a book I really felt like reading, I returned to that familiar well: Agatha Christie. The Man in the Brown Suit is sadly lacking in the Poirot department; how I miss that fussy Belgian detective! However, I was delighted to once again run into Colonel Race, who was Hercule Poirot's accomplice in Death on the Nile and Cards on the Table.
