Barry Diller on Banks, Snowden and His Broadcasting Start-Up

Barry Diller isn’t known to be particularly shy about speaking his mind. And as the leadoff speaker on Tuesday at DealBook’s Opportunities for Tomorrow Conference, he held true to form.

In a wide-ranging discussion with the DealBook columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, the IAC chief touched on more than a few hot-button topics. Asked about Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, he replied that he is an “utterly decent man” who did the government’s bidding.

Why hasn’t the government brought up criminal charges related to the financial crisis? “It’s hard to convict people in generalities,” he said.

If prosecutors had a clear shot at filing charges, he added, “do you think they would hesitate a millisecond if they had clear cause?”

What about Edward Snowden, whose disclosures of secret government documents have shed light on an array of National Security Agency surveillance programs? Mr. Diller, despite being the head of a media and technology company, didn’t hesitate in calling the former government contractor a “rat” guilty of perpetrating “ratdom.”

The IAC chief also vociferously defended Aereo, the broadcasting start-up that he is backing â€" and that has drawn the ire of traditional television networks. Mr. Diller noted that the courts so far have validated the legality of Aereo’s business model and argued that the company won’t deprive networks of lucrative retransmission fees. Instead, he said, it is introducing networks to a valuable new audience: young people who aren’t cord-cutters, but haven’t even plugged in said cord.

Even former allies and employees took a little flak. Mr. Diller said that the departure of Tina Brown as the head of The Daily Beast was “healthy” for both sides. “We had to drain the ink from her veins,” he said, and with her gone, the publication has been filled with “a whole raft of truly digital people.”

But there were still some topics that Mr. Diller wouldn’t touch. When Mr. Sorkin asked if the government should break up the big banks, the media mogul hesitated. “I don’t know,” he said. “This is so below my pay grade.”