The annual seminar hosted by the trade magazine Talkers is intended to discuss the leading issues affecting talk radio, from advertising to how to break through in a crowded field. But this year, the more than 55 speakers had a particular topic they wanted to discuss: the recent Justice Department investigation into media leaks.
“They’re doing some scary things in our country right now,” Mr. Beck told the crowd. “They were started by Republicans and they’re being furthered by the Democrats.”
The press — often the target of allegations of liberal bias by conservative media — has found an unlikely ally in right-leaning radio and television hosts who have taken to defending the First Amendment with a fire-and-brimstone zeal. (To drive home his point that anything goes when it comes to free speech, Mr. Beck waved the Koran and a napkin said to be stained with Hitler’s blood.)
The First Amendment has always been a hot-button issue for talk radio, but conservative hosts in particular have focused on freedom of the press after revelations last month that the Justice Department had seized the phone and e-mail records of a Fox News reporter, the Washington correspondent James Rosen, who had included details about a secret United States report on North Korea in a 2009 article published on FoxNews.com.
The Washington Post obtained an affidavit that described Mr. Rosen (without naming him) as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator.”
The investigation into Fox News became public only after The Associated Press said on May 13 that the government had subpoenaed its telephone records in an unrelated leak investigation. Fox News has said it had no knowledge of the Justice Department’s 2010 subpoena for Mr. Rosen’s telephone records.
The debate over the government’s approach to leaks widened on Sunday when The Guardian revealed the identity of Edward Snowden, a contractor for the National Security Agency and the source of disclosures about the government’s widespread collection of private Internet and telephone data. On Sunday evening Fox News pundits debated whether the Obama administration had overreached in the use of secret surveillance techniques.
There was little debate, however, when it came to Mr. Rosen.
“This is Big Brother,” Sean Hannity said during his “Hannity” program on Fox News shortly after the details about the investigation into Mr. Rosen became public. “Rosen is doing what reporters are supposed to do,” added Mr. Hannity, who also hosts the syndicated talk radio program “The Sean Hannity Show.”
In a memo to employees last month, Roger Ailes, president and chief executive of Fox News, said, “We will not allow a climate of press intimidation, unseen since the McCarthy era, to frighten any of us away from the truth.”
Critics and supporters have noticed the emergence of Fox News, known for its battle cries of liberal bias in other news outlets, as one of the most vocal defenders of those news outlets’ rights.
“I love the juxtaposition of the media being defended by the people they don’t typically like, which is conservatives,” said Seton Motley, president of Less Government, an organization devoted to diminishing the role of the federal government.
Michael Smerconish, an independent who hosts a talk radio program on Sirius XM and contributes to MSNBC, said conservatives’ outrage over the Obama administration’s leak investigations has everything to do with politics.
“Given a choice of who gets thrown under the bus — Obama or the liberal media — Obama is first on the list,” Mr. Smerconish said. He added, “The liberal media would be a close second.”
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/10/business/media/conservatives-as-defenders-of-the-media.html?partner=rss&emc=rss