Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work, pushing journalists who cover the American military further from the seat of its power. The nation’s leadership called the new rules “common sense” to help regulate a “very disruptive” press.
News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.
Many of the reporters waited to leave together at a 4 p.m. deadline set by the Defense Department to get out of the building. As the hour approached, boxes of documents lined a Pentagon corridor and reporters carried chairs, a copying machine, books and old photos to the parking lot from suddenly abandoned workspaces. Shortly after 4, about 40 to 50 journalists left together after handing in badges.
Honestly, this seems like a no-brainer. Having Pentagon press access means you get to break stories sooner, but if your only reporting what the Pentagon gives you, you’re basically just getting press releases a little earlier. That’s not worth giving up you’re ability to get an exclusive story from a leak, and there’s always someone who wants to leak something. I’m sure that even these journalists’ cooperate overlords see agreeing to this as a bad business decision.
Bravo to all those reporters rejecting this new opaque authoritarian!
Here’s the second most important piece of into in the article:
Only the conservative One America News Network signed on.
Does anyone hear the propaganda if there is no one there to listen? The republicans are really fucking themselves on this one.
Seems like they’re just bypassing the press and putting out their own propaganda via social media. Hell, Trump has his own platform he had the balls to call “Truth Social”.
Isn’t it just a trash old fork of Mastodon? Would certainly make the public Bondi DM make sense.
Don’t forget the maga influencers as well
To further drive their points how, the ones remaining should further pontificate this. Every time Trump attacks one of the press during pressers they should all immediately turn their cameras off and pack up their equipment. This would be a glorious rebuttal to his attack on the Press and our Free Speech. They will not, however, because nearly all of them now are complicit actors working for media outlets owned by billionaire Trump donors.
They could all also stop sucking his dick and start reporting on reality. Call a spade a spade, or a dictator a dictator. If trump loses the media, he loses a lot of his power to control the narrative. I don’t believe that most of these news outlets have a spine and are willing to work together to tell the truth, but I can dream… Sometimes.
Think about who owns the networks.
I don’t wanna, because I know.
The one remaining is OANN which was basically MAGA state media before this happened anyway.
Sadly, I think it’s a win-win for the fascists.
The press only had a presence in the pentagon because it was advantageous to have them there. The media isn’t disappearing just because they are no longer given easy access. They will just have less of a relationship with the department of defense. Yes, it’s bad for the journalists, but it’s worse for the administration. Those reporters had been there so that they could spread the official talking points. Letting reporters become dependent on their easy access and maintaining a reasonable working relationship makes it a lot easier to seed stories, to ask for small favors and to give off the record comments that shape narratives. Ol’ Whiskeyleaks is failing at coercion and in the process is sacrificing influence. That he doesn’t understand this is amazing considering he was (theoretically) a journalist until less than a year ago.
As with so many things, they are destroying what their predecessors spent the last century building by being both malicious and incompetent.
As the guy said on NPR, people have phones. The reporters can still do their jobs without being physically present in the building.
inb4 trump says he fired them all or some stupid shit.
