Radio Hosts: We Won’t Back Down

Talk radio hosts in Boston and across the nation lashed back at media attacks blaming them for the Arizona rampage that left six dead and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in critical condition — insisting they won’t be silenced by a campaign of “intimidation and smear,” writes Jessica Heslam at the Boston herald.com.

From Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck to local radio hosts Michael Graham, Jeff Katz, Howie Carr and Todd Feinburg, right-wing gabbers have come under fire from liberals and others for “violent rhetoric” that some claim incited deranged loner Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the massacre.

“If you’re going to accuse me of being an accessory to murder, it would be nice if you had at least some small evidence — and no one can present it,” Graham, a WTKK-FM (96.9) host and Tea Party organizer, told the Herald yesterday.

Katz, the morning-drive host on “Rush Radio” WXKS-AM (1200), said Loughner, 22, is the only one who should be held to account for the slaughter.

“I don’t think radio or TV is responsible in any way,” Katz said. “I don’t think this guy got messages from Sarah Palin or talk radio. He might very well have been listening to his cereal in the morning and he interpreted ‘snap,’ ‘crackle,’ ‘pop’ as instructions.”

Herald columnist and WRKO-AM (680) host Howie Carr also called the liberal blame-game a “real stretch.”

“This guy is a pot-smoking, lunatic liberal with a shrine to skulls in his backyard,” Carr said last night. “I went to a lot of Tea Party events last year and I never smelled marijuana once — and this guy smoked marijuana every day of his life, apparently.”

Read more here.