Thought Police Patrol Convention’s Radio Row

By John Fund
September 6, 2012 12:57 P.M.

National Review Online:

Conservative talk-show hosts who came to Charlotte to interview political figures are furious. For the first time in anyone’s memory, Radio Row — the designated set of booths available to visiting talk-show hosts — has seen restrictions placed on its use by Team Obama. DNC staffers at Radio Row will book leading Democrats for slots on conservative stations but then cancel the appearances an hour or so before broadcast “because you’re not our audience.”

Roger Hedgecock, a former mayor of San Diego now hosting a nationally syndicated talk show, decided to pack up and leave Charlotte early because “we were blocked from getting any guests that mattered. It was a complete freeze.” Larry O’Connor of Breitbart Radio told me, “It was the most bizarre act of censorship. These shows paid large fees and spent thousands on equipment setup and they couldn’t do their programs because of interference.”

“According to sources at Talk Radio News Service, placing a stringer outside the designated TV area to ask high-level Democrats to stop by radio row has also been banned by the DNC,” Ben Shapiro wrote at Breitbart’s Big Journalism:

When I approached liberal activist John Podesta about appearing on KRLA’s “Heidi Harris Show” along with me and my co-hosts Heidi Harris (conservative) and Brian Whitman (liberal), his handler quickly intervened. Later, the handler stopped by to clarify: did the show have two liberals and one conservative, or two conservatives and one liberal? When I stated that it had two conservatives and one liberal, he quickly shook his head and sprinted away.

So much for the transparency and openness of the Obama era.