Fox News executive VP of news Michael Clemente released the following statement to TVNewser with regard to James Rosen being targeted by the Department of Justice.

“We are outraged to learn today that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.”

Clemente’s statement comes as The New Yorker‘s Ryan Lizza uncovers the full warrant application, which makes it seem as though the FBI is interested in investigating Rosen as much as it is interested in investigating Rosen’s source. Chilling indeed.

On “America Live,” Megyn Kelly revealed that two other Fox News staffers were targeted for investigation by the DOJ on stories unrelated to Rosen’s. Videos after the jump.
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Fox News “America Live” anchor Megyn Kelly has signed a new contract with the cable channel, according to Brian Stelter in the New York Times.

Kelly had met with executives at CNN and ABC News before deciding to stay at FNC.

Update: A Fox News spokeswoman tells TVNewser “We will neither confirm nor deny any contract discussions with Megyn Kelly.”

Last November, TVNewser sat down with Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, where he talked about keeping her in the family:

We’d love her to stay here and be even a bigger star. So I’m not going to go past that. I’d be stunned if she wanted to go any other cable channel. That’s a real dive off a high cliff. If somebody wanted her to host the “Today” show or something, she’d have to look at that I suppose. Nobody’s ever left here and made it and a lot of people who left other places have done really well here.

It is widely believed inside FNC that Kelly is being groomed for a larger role at the channel, either later in the afternoon or in primetime. With Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity signing new deals in the last year, the next primetime contract to expire is that of 10 PM anchor Greta Van Susteren, whose last deal was inked in 2010, though it isn’t clear exactly when it ends.

Shepard Smith‘s contract also expires at the end of the year. Both Smith and Van Susteren have been rock-solid ratings leaders in their respective timeslots over the last few years, so any change would be a big one.

Here’s something you may not know about Megyn Kelly: she listens to Eminem. We know this because Kelly lapsed into a perfectly-timed rap to “Forgot about Dre” during Fox News Channel’s coverage of the Boston manhunt as she read a song lyric aloud from the suspect’s reported Twitter profile.

“I believe that’s a quote of a song,” Kelly said after her rap. Watch:

A holdup at a Cambridge 7-11 store around 10pm Thursday set off an all night pursuit for the suspects in the Boston Marathon blasts. By sunrise, an MIT police officer was dead, an MBTA officer was wounded, one of the suspects was dead  and another suspect remained on the loose, both have been identified as brothers, originally from Chechnya, living in the Boston area. With multiple crime scenes in multiple locations, one suspect still at large, and the area in virtual lockdown, the overnight events kept local and national news crews on the air nonstop.

The first reports began coming in after 1am. Networks were cautious of not connecting the shooting of the MIT officer with the search for the bombing suspects. CNN International broke in to CNN/U.S. at 1:13am. MSNBC’s Mara Schiavocampo broke in at 1:18 with the news along with correspondent Kerry Sanders. At 1:24am Fox News’ Marianne Rafferty broke in to a re-air of “On the Record” with news of the MIT shooting.

At 2:24am, as it was becoming clear the holdup, carjacking and MIT incident were related to the blast investigation, CNN’s Jake Tapper held up his iPad to show new photos of the suspects that he’d been emailed.

ABC’s overnight show World News Now kept viewers up to date throughout the night with help from affiliates. George Stephanopoulos anchored his first special report for ABC at 4:30am. NBC’s Lester Holt anchored an NBC News special report around 3:30amET and CBS News broadcast a special report at 4:40am with Anne Marie Green.

Developing…

More, 8:27am: CNN’s Jake Tapper and John Berman, anchoring coverage, are talking to a Cambridge Rindge & Latin High School friend of 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the suspect still on the loose: “To think he’s capable of something like this is beyond belief.”

More: 8:35am: A Fox News is trained on a home in Watertown, MA where local and FBI officials have guns drawn. “Our cameraman is being told to back off,” said Brian Kilmeade.

FNC’s Griff Jenkins was near the firefight last night and this morning explained his rental car “is in the middle of the crime scene.”

More, 9:12am: On CNN, via an interview with CBS owned station WBZ-TV, the uncle of the brothers says his 19-year-old nephew had called another relative last night after his older brother was killed and said, “Forgive me and from now on we will be together.” After reporters apologized to him, the uncle added: “I’m sorry too, if he did this, I’m sorry too. I can’t believe it. It’s so crazy. It’s not possible. When I heard this on TV news, I was thinking how can it be like this?”

Update: ABC and CBS have expanded their morning shows beyond 9am as the manhunt for the 19-year-old suspect continues. NBC’s 9am hour of “Today” is also devoted to the breaking news. At one point, new ABC News correspondent Byron Pitts was reporting live as police officers moved him and other reporters away from an active location. A police officer could be heard telling the reporters: “Come on. Let’s go. Off the sidewalk, please. Around the corner.”

More, 9:35am: ABC showed what it called exclusive video of a bullet-riddled SUV being taken away by investigators. Brian Rossreported: “Our cameraman caught a shot of that car being towed away, a Mercedes SUV that the two brothers hijacked — carjacked at a gas station in Cambridge near Memorial Drive.” Explosive devices were reportedly thrown from car by the suspects. The driver was released by the brothers, unharmed.

More, 10:50am: All networks have their cameras trained on a neighborhood in Watertown, MA. CNN has said it is putting programming on a 5-second delay as local and federal authorities have their guns drawn imploring media to stay back.

More, 12:24pm: On CNN, correspondent Deborah Feyerick reported that, after being pushed back from an area in Watertown, police are now allowing reporters to return to their original positions closer to the search scene.

More, 1pm: CBS special report ends. Diane Sawyer continues on ABC; Brian Williams picks up across NBC.

More, 1:45pm: ABC’s Bianna Golodryga, who speaks fluent Russian, spoke to the father of the two bombing suspects, Anzor Tsarnaev, on three separate occasions today. Tsarnaev, who lives in Russia, tells Golodryga that neither the U.S. government nor the Russian government has contacted him at that time.

More, 2:09pm: Anderson Cooper cuts away from remarks from the suspects’ aunt in Toronto, who claims her nephews are innocent. “Clearly she is in a state of denial or not really aware of the whole impact of what has happened here, what is going on,” Cooper said. Megyn Kelly comes to the same conclusion on Fox News: “That’s the aunt,” she said.

Around 1:30 this afternoon, CNN’s John King went on the air reporting from one of his sources that a suspect in the Boston blasts has been identified. Fox News’s Catherine Herridge reported the news moments later: “Fox confirming that the feds have an image which would suggest that a suspect at that second bombing site.” But on MSNBC, NBC’s longtime Justice correspondent Pete Williams broke in to Andrea Mitchell‘s show, to temper reports: “It bears repeating perhaps because of some reporting that’s going on about a suspect … we’re told they’ve identified a number of people in these pictures they’ve looked at that could be potentially folks they want to pursue… but to say they have a suspect is not correct at this point.”

That didn’t slow the reporting on CNN and Fox News. By 1:50pm, Wolf Blitzer, along with King, was reporting an arrest had been made. Fox News, too, reported an arrest. NBC News went so far as to produce a network special report, anchored by Brian Williams — which aired on MSNBC — with Pete Williams again reporting, “No arrest has been made.”

• FishbowlNY: PBS’s Gwen Ifill Takes Offense to CNN Identifying Boston Bombing Suspect as “Dark-Skinned Male”

Williams added, “It’s rather confusing at this point. Partly because of the nomenclature here. One person’s item of interest is another person’s suspect. I would take a step back and say whatever is going on, it is a promising development.”

Stay tuned.

> Update: At 2:21 on Fox News, Megyn Kelly reported: “This is the situation we find ourselves in, folks. We got different law enforcement officers telling us different things. Two said to (Foxnews.com) that an arrest has been made. And now two are telling us no arrest has been made.”

> Update: At 2:28 on CNN, former FBI assistant director Tom Fuentes contradicted CNN’s reporting: “I have actually three separate sources, but two that are very highly placed and close to the investigation that have just told me that there has been no arrest, and, in fact, a suspect has not been identified by name yet, that they have — they’re looking for someone, but don’t have anybody in custody yet and don’t have an identification.”

> Update: John King on CNN at 2:46: “Part of this reflects on us, part of it also reflects on people you talk to, reliable sources, and Fran Townsend is one of our finest people, Boston law enforcement source saying we got it. When you have people who have been reliable sources if they’re ahead of themselves, we need to circle with them. We need to figure this out ourselves.”

> More: A CNN spokesperson tells HuffPost’s Michael Calderone: “CNN had three credible sources on both local and federal levels. Based on this information we reported our findings. As soon as our sources came to us with new information we adjusted our reporting.”

The cable news networks pivoted to breaking news in Massachusetts shortly after 3pmET Monday afternoon as two explosions went off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Fox News was the first cable news network to report the news at 3:06:18 p.m., followed just seconds later by CNN at 3:06:53 p.m. MSNBC reported the news at 3:08:45 p.m. All three cable news networks were several minutes minutes behind the first reports of the explosions on Twitter.

Fox News and CNN are relying on live pictures from Boston local stations. MSNBC has video from New England Cable News, which is owned and operated by NBC Universal.

> More: The broadcast networks also broke in with news of the explosions. CBS News was first at 3:10pmET, followed by ABC News and NBC News at 3:13 p.m. Scott Pelley is anchoring on CBS, Brian Williams on NBC and Diane Sawyer and George Stephanopoulos on ABC.

> More: Matt Frucci, the incoming executive producer of CNN’s new morning show, is doing eyewitness reports from the scene for the network. Wolf Blitzer is anchoring. And on Fox News, Shepard Smith is talking with WGBH’s Emily Rooney, former network executive and daughter of Andy Rooney.

> More: Anderson Cooper is on his way to Boston and will anchor at 8pmET and 10pmET.

> More: Here’s affiliate video of one of the explosions, as seen on CNN:

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The Hollywood Reporter released its 2013 “35 Most Powerful People In Media” list, and TV news dominates the winners. The list looks at the most dominant media personalities in New York.

The list includes (in alphabetical order) Roger Ailes, Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, Anderson Cooper, Bob Costas, Katie Couric, Jeff Fager, Pat Fili-Krushel, James Goldston, Phil Griffin, Sean Hannity, Megyn Kelly, the “60 Minutes” team, the “Today” team, Rachel Maddow, Piers Morgan, Bill O’Reilly, Scott Pelley, David Rhodes, The “Good Morning America” team, the “CBS This Morning” team, Diane Sawyer, Ben Sherwood, Barbara Walters, Brian Williams and Jeff Zucker.

Some of the recipients gave interviews, others did not. You can see the full list here.

Fox News has been sued by a former Wisconsin firefighter over a segment on “America Live with Megyn Kelly.” The firefighter, Aaron Marjala, suffered nerve damage in his arm following an injury, rendering him unable to do his job. He filed for and collected disability payments, but also stayed in shape by running marathons (which does not typically require the use of both arms). That fact was picked up by local and national media, including ABC News, and FNC.

You can watch the FNC segment here:

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has details on the suit:

Kelly’s banter with Armstrong about the case “falsely communicated to viewers that Marjala was not really injured at all, that Marjala deserved scorn and ridicule for even applying for disability status, and that Marjala had committed a crime,” the suit contends.

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The College of Cardinals has selected a new Pope on its first full day of voting. White smoke began to rise from the chimney above the Sistine Chapel at 2:06 PM ET (7:06 PM in Vatican City), signaling that a new Pope had been chosen. The Bells of St Peter rang throughout the city minutes later.

The results had been expected, with all three cable news channels featuring chyrons to the effect of “smoke expected momentarily” in the minutes leading up to the event. There was, as one might also expect, some confusion as to what color the smoke was.

“Kinda dark, kinda light, it is the lightest smoke we have seen,” CNN’s Chris Cuomo said. “We are going to be transparent about it, we don’t know.”

“It appears grey, it is whitish,” FNC’s Megyn Kelly said.

“It looks white,” MSNBC’s Tamron Hall said.

The color was made clear relatively quickly against the black sky, even if it started out greyish. The broadcasters broke in moments after the smoke appeared for special reports. Every anchor appeared to be in position to cover the event when it happened.

The three business networks also covered the Papal selection: CNBC had to interrupt a live interview with Martha Stewart to break the news, while FBN erroneously reported that the smoke was black, airing the chyron “New Pope not selected”, before quickly correcting themselves. Bloomberg did not have a chimneycam, but broke into programming when it confirmed that the smoke was white.

Update: Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina, has been selected as Pope. He will take the name Pope Francis I. Broadcast and cable networks went non-stop until the announcement was made at 3:12 Pm ET. A search of TVEyes shows that Bergoglio was not on the radar of U.S. networks. He was mentioned only twice in the last few days, once on CNN and once on MSNBC. The Spanish language networks, however, did float Bergoglio as a possible frontrunner.

Fox News anchor Shepard Smith submits his media diet to AdWeek.  Smith devours media, but not so much TV. “I don’t watch a lot of TV. I’m not married to it.”

So what does he watch?

Megyn Kelly, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and maybe some FNC programs in the morning. he also sleeps with his smartphone:

Before bed, do you bite into a novel, graze on Twitter or fast until morning?
At bedtime, I do another lap. I make sure nothing blew up that I need to stay up for. I sleep with my Samsung Galaxy in the bed. They have a tendency to call me…It goes with the territory.