From “On the Media”: Seditious Conspiracy

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On January 6th, 2021, “On the Media” reporter Micah Loewinger recorded the secret communications of the Oath Keepers on a walkie-talkie app called Zello. After reporting on the findings, Loewinger received a subpoena calling on him to testify in the first Oath Keepers criminal trial last year. In conversations with “On the Media” host Brooke Gladstone, “Death, Sex & Money” host Anna Sale, and Roger Parloff, a senior editor at Lawfare, Loewinger grapples with the consequences of his reporting, and explores what happens when a journalist is forced to testify in court. Plus, Loewinger looks at the nineteen-seventies Supreme Court case United States v. Caldwell to understand the legal precedents for journalists being called on to testify in federal investigations, the limits of First Amendment privileges for the press, and the sometimes tenuous relationship between journalists and the government. This episode originally aired on “On the Media” on May 26, 2023.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, and we've got something special on the podcast today.
0:09.7	It's reporting from WNYC's Micah Loinger, about January 6th, and how Micah found himself on the witness stand at the trial of Stuart Rhodes and other members of the Oathkeepers.
0:22.1	If you're an on-the-media listener, you may have already heard this on their program,
0:26.1	but if not, we wanted to share it with you because it raises some really critical questions
0:30.7	about journalistic independence.
0:32.8	During the insurrection, Micah was monitoring a walkie-talkie app called Zello. He recorded real-time chatter among
0:40.3	some of the oathkeepers. We have a good group. We got about 30, 40 of us. We're sticking together
0:45.4	and sticking to the plan. Prosecutors wanted to use that as evidence in going after the group.
0:51.4	Now, it's rare for a reporter to be called as a federal witness, especially
0:55.3	such a high-profile one. So Michael Lohinger documented it all for On the Media.
1:03.8	The story will continue in a moment. In April 2021, a few months after the insurrection,
1:10.4	I was on 60 minutes.
1:12.0	On January 6th, Michael Lohinger found an open stop-the-steel conversation going on among 100 people on Zello and started recording.
1:21.1	It wasn't until a couple days later that I started to...
1:25.0	A few months later, an assistant United States attorney, one of the prosecutors spearheading
1:29.7	the Oathkeeper's criminal cases at the time, reached out to me to tell me he had seen me on TV,
1:35.1	and he wanted to talk on the phone about the Zello tape.
1:39.3	I thought maybe if I got this guy on the phone, I might be able to glean some useful information
1:45.0	about the investigation that would help my own reporting, maybe even a juicy scoop.
1:50.2	I wasn't interested in giving him the zealot tape.
1:53.8	I don't believe journalists should work with law enforcement in any capacity.
1:59.0	When I responded saying I could make time for a chat, he replied saying that he
	...

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