I previously criticized the new Pentagon policies for media organizations. While the Trump Administration made some changes, the rules remained unduly restrictive and unprecedented. As a result, virtually every news organization, including Fox News, refused to sign the agreements at the deadline — a decision that I strongly support.
The changes will effectively bar most media from the Pentagon, undermining the department’s ability to work with reporters to ensure accurate reporting on military operations.
The Pentagon Press Association objected last week that a revised policy still seeks to prohibit journalists from soliciting unauthorized information in addition to accessing it. It said that the rules appeared to be “designed to stifle a free press and potentially expose us to prosecution for simply doing our jobs.”
The PPA added that the revised policy “conveys an unprecedented message of intimidation to everyone within the DoD, warning against any unapproved interactions with the press and even suggesting it’s criminal to speak without express permission – which plainly, it is not”.
The relationship with the press can be strained at times, and tensions with the Trump Administration are notoriously high. However, this is a “beat” that requires close and ongoing communications to keep the media (and the public) fully informed of military policies and programs.
The organizations refusing to sign include outlets that are viewed as supportive of the Trump Administration with large conservative audiences.
Many of us have joined the Trump Administration in criticizing the bias of most media outlets. Indeed, the public reflects the same criticism in polling with the media at record lows of public trust. However, this move is gratuitous and self-defeating.
Despite the anger at the media and the need for serious reforms in many outlets, we need to protect the free press, which plays a critical role in our constitutional system.
Thus far, only One America News Network has agreed to the new regulations.
As I stated earlier, I am dubious about possible legal challenges over access to the Pentagon. Other agencies such as the CIA do not allow general access to the media. The Administration, in my view, has the advantage in any challenges over such rules.
Fine. Let the press in the door. There’s no law that says anyone in Government must speak to them, though. Simply stand there, cold faced and without any response, as they ask their idiotic, loaded questions – then say, “next question?” and repeat. Waste as much as THEIR time as you can.
That would overcome any objection from press members not signing the agreement that they deserve access to government property. Confine them to one media room and show them old military films endlessly.
On the other hand, the Pentagon contains some of the greatest military secrets of the nation and not even the public has free range in the Pentagon. Too many “journalists” have shown that they are happy to damage the U.S. in any way that they can. Why should the U.S. military weaken itself for leftist journalists’ whims?
The MSM did this to themselves. They are a far cry from a profession that was once considered noble. They are vast majority of them flat out lie and should not be trusted. They do not practice real journalism and their agenda in your face. THIS is why most Americans do not get their news from the MSM anymore. Freedom of the press? Sure but they should not just be allowed to do whatever they want. They lost the trust of Americans andThis administration.
“a profession that was once considered noble.”
I wonder if that myth was popularized by media themselves. Sensational, and sometimes entirely fictional, reporting has been going on since the 19th century, if not before. Look up “yellow journalism” for starters.
Agreed, Turley. It’s a good thing the press didn’t sign on to this total censorship by restricted access measure. It’s draconian…, something worthy of the word’s worst dictators.
For the time being (until trump and hegseth decide to go for full military crackdown on press outlets) it will do for the press what they should’ve done long ago…, that’s to not give the trump administration attention and to not treat them as if they’re some sort of ‘normal’ entity.
On top of that, the measure backfires for the Pentagon because it forces leaks even more than it did previously. Basically, by refusing to sign, the press forced trump’s worst nightmare: lack of control of the lens with which to view him. Ranks right up there with the type of decision making caliber that bankrupted casinos. Trump is an idiot and this is just another reason why.
I agree with Professor Turley on this—every news organization except one. One America News or whatever it’s called, the Trump suckup apparently being the only one to sign on seems desperate for some market share.
I think this is about the current military attacks on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. There are a lot of sketchy claims about the contents of those boats and their true purpose. President Trump and Hegseth ordering the killing of those on alleged drug boats could very likely be illegal and outright murder. That could be one reason why the Department of Defense is coming out with this new policy.
Speaking of keeping the media from divulging sensitive military information, perhaps Hegseth should stop sending sensitive military information through third-party apps like Signal first.
On one other note. Perhaps this is a precursor to Trump invoking the Insurrection act and keeping the media in the dark is part of the agenda.
George
illegal and outright murder.
***********************
Hey moron. O-dumber had a American killed by our armed forces and you lefties said zip!
PS george. Polling shows 70% of Americans have no issues turning drug runners into mist
I remember those heady days just a few short years ago when GeorgeX was passionately arguing that Obama had every right to drone-kill Americans and their children in foreign countries without so much as a trial.
Followed by GeorgeX once again predictably saying that Biden butchering one of our interpreters and his entire family in a drone strike to show tough he was after getting 13 of our Marines and dozens others maimed in Kabul could not possibly be illigal and outright murder.
GeorgeX’s arguements just can’t even get past the lowest barrier of being 100% sketchy, never mind his famous Big Triple D Democrat Double Standards.
GeorgeX is right about one thing: Hegseth should have looked at the fact that The Oval Office House Plant established Signal for internal communications, and taken that as a warning that if the AutoPen President said it was okay, he should have never touched that app.
The press has done this to themselves. With all of the news over the last 10 years that has been proven fake, the press has confirmed that they can not be trusted. Yes, the press should be “free” to report truthfully and, where possible, prevented from reporting falsehoods. The best chance of restoring faith in the press and media is for the press and media to voluntarily purge their ranks of their fake news “journalists” and fake news talking heads.
What news has been proven false? And false as in wrong, not false as in you don’t like it.
Ah let’s see. Oh yeah, Russian collusion, Hunter’s lap top, the origins of the virus being in china and man made, nobody is being censored, Biden is sharp as a tack, cheap fakes, Biden wasn’t corrupt etc etc etc.
Objectively Russia did help Trump. Covid was not man made. There is no evidence of Biden being corrupt. There is plenty of evidence Trump is corrupt. You wrote exactly why we need a media that does not just report what the government wants. You have a view of the world that has little basis in reality.
“Objectively Russia did help Trump. ” Objectively, that is an old and worn out Democrat lie. One of Putin’s Russian spies, a Democrat operative no less who was under investigation for espionage, did help Clinton by being willing to illegally write her work of fiction, the Russia Dossier.
No evidence of Biden being corrupt? Not those 150+ Suspicious Activity Reports filed by worried banks with Obama concerning his Vice President? Mexican drug cartels don’t run up that many. $30 million dollars going to President Big Guy through the hands of The Crackhead Kid?
No evidence at all! Nothing To See Here, Please Believe Me, Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes™
You commie denizens who briefly surface from the Democrat Borg and attempt to get us to agree with your version of reality still haven’t figured out that your BullSchiff is well beyond it’s best-by date.
My grandmother’s evening tea had more body and strength than your feeble phony arguments.
Have you been in a coma?
“What news has been proven false?” Can you say “Trump-Russia Dossier”, you newly hatched commie reptile? How about “Biden Bribery Laptop”? Or how about “Alpha Bank servers in Trump Tower”?
You commie hatchlings must think normal Americans have memories as short as the time you’ve been out of the egg you hatched from.
The faith, or lack thereof, of any percentage of the population in any or all information source(s) is simply not relevant to this discussion. Nor is the truth value of any or all news stories.
If every single word printed on paper or spoken into a microphone was a deliberate lie and every single person in the country knew it, the State would, and should, gain no additional power. Nor would, or should, the opposite case decrease it.
Therefore, no argument based on “Fake News!!!??!!” nor “Democracy Dies in Darkness!!!??!!” should be advanced by anyone who can count to 11 with their shoes on, and everyone else is entitled to assume that anyone advancing such arguments is an idiot.
–Shannon
First, there is an inherent conflict between the legitimate obligations of the Pentagon, and those of a free Press in this regard. To state what imo is obvious, the Pentagon has an obligation to keep secret any information that it thinks would hinder its missions if made public, the Press has an obligation to unearth and publish any information that may be useful to the public in judging whether the military is actually protecting, or undermining, its liberty. I think that conflict is as it should be: an asset, not a liability. That said, I also generally agree with the POV expressed in this ZeroHedge column, that far too often in the past, the Press has abdicated its responsibility to critically report and examine the military’s foreign campaigns, and instead chosen to take the easy road of being nothing more that fawning sycophants, and so is deserving of little sympathy in this case.
‘Goodbye’: Hegseth Shows Legacy Media Outlets The Door Amid Revolt Against New Pentagon Press Policy
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/goodbye-hegseth-shows-legacy-media-outlets-door-amid-revolt-against-new-pentagon-press
This is a great and thoughtful comment. I am where you are.
I should probably have added a concession that media coverage of military ops can sometimes be unjustifiably critical, as well. But the image in my head as I wrote that was Bernard Shaw and Wolf Blitzed of CNN cheerleading Operation Desert Storm with reckless and shameless abandon.
Yes it was a terrible thing that our government did not stand back and allow Saddam Hussein to seize Kuwait and then continue standing on the sidelines as we did first in WWI and then WWII, assuming nothing could go wrong for America by allowing that and whatever country Saddam chose to pick off next. Doing us while our NATO allies and 21 nations of the Arab League asked us to get involved in the attempts to force Saddam to leave prior to the war beginning.
Yes! The media should have been furiously excoriating Bush every step of the way, taking every chance they had while Bush and the Coalition spent six months repeatedly warning Saddam and issuing ultimatums demanding Hussein leave.
After all, as we all know, the US definitely has not a single strategic interest in what goes on in the Middle East. Just as we didn’t in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for the first 2+ years of WWII.
Desert Storm was definitely an unnecessary war for us to fight – completely reckless and fought with shameless abandon! Not only by us, but by the 41 countries who were our allies!
Except: like thousands of others, I was actually there and I didn’t see it that way. Particularly after watching the butchery of the Iran-Iraq war just a few years before the invasion of Kuwait and the affect that had in that region that had affects here at home in CONUS as well as Europe.
Not to mention noticing all the troops we ran into everywhere we went from those other war mongering nations that joined us in that war: Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, Italy, France, Argentina… I think I missed a couple of dozen at least?
Revisionist history put forward 30 years after a war you were sent to attend, put forward by people who were probably teenagers at the best during that time, does have some entertainment value. Rand Paul lives!
That’s the Zerohedge article that says the media were Pentagon compliant war mongers.
Odd… remembering how they were after Bush’s blood for everything having to do with Afghanistan/Iraq after the first couple of years of the war, they struck me as being a media for who no war would be ever be fought perfectly enough by a Republican.
A view that quickly disappeared once Obama became president.
It would appear then we’ll be getting our information from the pentagon via One America News Network. Rules are rules, I’m not very sympathetic for many of the media members these days. I suppose when they adopt objectivity they’ll be more trustworthy.
Some additional details, Pentagon press pool’s main hang-up: journalists confirming they ‘understand’ new policies
“Overlawyered? Reporters appear reluctant to agree they “understand” the guidelines, which could open them up to possible prosecution if they receive classified information from any official.”
https://justthenews.com/government/security/pentagon-press-pools-main-hang-journalists-confirming-they-understand-new
I spent a portion of my career as a Federal employee. The nature of our mission often took us out of the office to various areas of the country. The general rule was that we could speak to reporters about the specific job we were doing, but questions that might delve into classified areas or questions about agency policy were to be referred to external affairs staff.
We were instructed to keep in mind that many “reporters” were posers or wannabes.
No one, not even members of Congress (or their staffs) were permitted beyond security at the office. We had a special press room outside security for meetings and press conferences. If a reporter was meeting inside security, they were to be escorted at all times, signed in appropriately, and correctly badged. As part of my duties, I was often at military bases for meetings and even trips to the restroom was under escort. I’ve gone to meetings at the Pentagon, fully escorted.
Does anyone remember that fool, Maxine Waters trying to get into the USAID building or fat LaMonica attempting to shove her way into a border detention center? She goes to trial Nov 10, by the way.
I don’t see the Pentagon rules as much different. I was a sworn Federal officer with a security clearance who was required to follow these rules. The “new” Pentagon rules aren’t new.
That is me, Farm4501
“We must protect the ability of disgruntled leftists to leak sensitive information in order to harm the Commander-in-Chief.”
Protecting Trump against bad stories is not the job of the Pentagon, and limiting the press to suppress unfavorable stories is a massive 1A violation.
Protecting the Democrat-Mainstream Media Propaganda Complex mission to try any and all amoral, biased or outright illegal means to handcuff another Republican presidency is not found anywhere in the First Amendment.
I have no problem with the published rules from the Pentagon. The military is in a unique position in society and secrecy is needed and rules of access are rightfully restricted. Especially with the press of today. I note many comments above have mentioned the restrictions in private industry. Coming from a medical background, the press and others have no unrestricted access to everything.
In a hospital you can walk down many halls to get somewhere but you have no right to enter every room or stare at monitoring devices of vital signs or procedures unless you are designated as family with a patient. Otherwise you can walk down the public hall, go to the gift shop, restrict yourself to the room of your family member and talk to the nurse or doctor of your family member. Otherwise you leave everyone else alone and stay out of the way. If you get too boisterous then security will remove you. In some ways it is even more security conscious than the military.
We deal with people’s most intimate privacy and you will find yourself on the sidewalk or arrested if you violate that.
Access depends on time, place, type of event , and a multitude of other factors.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of the press but it does not say we have to be nice to them.
When we had a loyal, patriotic Press, these restrictions were not necessary. That is no longer the case.
Wow. Fascist much?
“Wow. Fascist much?” Wow – how did you forget to also call him a racist and White Supremacist!
Any private company you work for will tell you not to talk to the press without explicit authorization, direct all press requests to the PR department or executive management.
loose lips sink ships
The first amendment is the right to speak, not the right to question or get access inside any organization. Telling soldiers they can’t talk to the press is not a violation of the rights of the reporters, at most it’s a violation of the rights of the soldiers, and there is a very long history of supporting rules about only specific people can reveal internal details to the outside.
just like the civilian employee, you can go to a political rally as yourself and give a speech, but you can’t go in uniform or otherwise do something to make anyone believe that you are providing the policy of your employer
David Lang
Right on David!
All organizations deserve a measure of privacy in their daily deliberations. Without that, the ability to explore ideation grinds to a halt. That said, a good organization welcomes the chance to face the public and share decisions it has made via press conferences and releases. I don’t support individuals doing unauthorized leaks. We have a whistleblower law giving internal employees a means to expose corruption and cover-ups to Congress.
Looks like the time for asking nicely is over.
https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/1977828217315549301
This Administration of competing press secretaries can’t handle questions let alone criticism — because Magats suffer from TDS.
Huh?
From a media that solicits garbage it won’t verify before printing as long as it agrees with their biased agenda. And what right do they have to be unidentified civilians in restricted areas?
Missing how the Oval Office House Plant’s press secretaries, Cringe John-Pear Shaped and Circle Back Psaki dealt so well with questions, especially when they didn’t have a binder in front of them to flip through before answering questions?
Commies think the memory of normal Americans is just as bad as theirs is.
From the perspective of a now eighty-one year old lay citizen son of domestically born parents, the sole purpose of government in America is to serve and protect “We the People of the United States…” and they are our employees and we pay high prices for mostly inferior services. And, someone with suitable access needs to inform President Trump that, ultimately, he is nothing more than the highest ranking civil servant (with an emphasis on “servant”) we have. He should at least try to honor, obey, support and defend the US Constitution as he swore to do, twice. Charles G. Shaver
It is not easy to fi d the right balance here. The press wrote that it has the right to publish classified information, and indeed it has, but the Pentagon has the right to protect that information as it is classified for a reason (one would hope). Some of the restrictions make common sense and are customary at many commercial enterprises, such as wearing a visitor batch, and not being allowed to roam freely in the compound. The press has a role to play and need to be enabled to do their job, but it is also a guest, and the host has the right and perhaps duty to protect its operations.
I don’t think news reporters should have carte Blanche to walk around the Pentagon as they please. Press interviews and news releases should be sufficient. Too many snooping and secrets happen that why