About two weeks into his tenure, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his team informed journalists at the Pentagon of changes: Independent news organizations, including CNN and The Washington Post, would be evicted from their workspaces, to be replaced by outlets friendly to the Trump administration, including Newsmax and the Daily Caller.
A few months later, Hegseth went further banning journalists from entering parts of the Pentagon without a government escort, despite the access that reporters have enjoyed in every recent administration, including Trump’s first term.
Last month, however, the beleaguered Cabinet secretary reached new depths, telling the free press that reporters won’t be able to cover the Defense Department unless they agree only to report information (including unclassified information) authorized for release by the Trump administration.
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a military veteran and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, responded soon after, “American journalists are not, should not and must not be mere stenographers for the party in power or the Pentagon itself.”
Major broadcast news networks came to the same conclusion. NBC News reported on the joint statement issued by ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media and NBC News:
Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues. … The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.
MSNBC (my employer) is among the news organizations that have refused to sign on to the secretary’s proposed rules.
In case this isn’t obvious, the fact that Fox News signed on to this statement is significant, not only because of the degree to which the network is aligned with Republican politics, but also because Fox was Hegseth’s employer as recently as last year.
In other words, the network has concluded that one of its own former employees is going too far to crack down on the nation’s free press. What’s more, in an encouraging development, a variety of other conservative outlets — Newsmax, The Washington Times, The Washington Examiner, et al. — have also rejected the defense secretary’s demands, prioritizing the freedom of the press. As best as I can tell, the only outlet that has endorsed Hegseth’s restrictions is a pro-Trump network called the One America News Network, or OAN. So what happens now? We’re just hours away from the Pentagon chief’s deadline, and as NBC News’ report noted: “Any media professional who declines to sign has 24 hours to turn in their Pentagon press credential and ‘clear their spaces’ inside the sprawling government complex.” Watch this space.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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