Hegseth’s War on the Press: Inside the Pentagon’s Descent Into Propaganda
As real reporters walk out, Hegseth fills the Pentagon with political loyalists posing as journalists.
In his first year, Pete Hegseth has lurched from controversy to controversy. First came a leak that revealed the Secretary of Defense shared war plans over the off-the-shelf messaging app called Signal. After “Signalgate” came reports that his office was in chaos and the White House was looking for his replacement. Most recently, he’s been caught in a scandal over a sickening second strike made against survivors of a U.S. attack on an alleged drug trafficking vessel in the Caribbean. This so-called “double tap” is a clear violation of the American and international rules of war.
Reeling from the bad press, what has Hegseth done? He has replaced the real reporters who cover the Pentagon with clowns and novices he expects will function as propaganda mouthpieces. At a press briefing on Monday, the so-called reporters included a video gotcha artist named James O’Keefe, the online conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, disgraced former Congressman Matt Gaetz, and a “correspondent” for a news site operated by the “My Pillow” guy (and Trump toady) Mike Lindell.
Matt Gaetz plays reporter at the Pentagon
O’Keefe used his time to ask what Hegseth and Co. were doing to find and remove any Pentagon officials who might be insufficiently loyal to the White House. (Forget the fact that officers pledge allegiance to the Constitution, not the President.) Gaetz, who was briefly Donald Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, asked a softball question about whether the DoD would be ready if Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro steps down. The answer was, “The department has a contingency plan for everything.”
The point of the press conference was not news. It was to demonstrate that the Pentagon is now picking and choosing who is a legitimate reporter and who is not. This display was the latest development in a battle that began last September when Hegseth’s team sent the old press corps a 23-page memo describing new restrictions on their work.
According to this communique, journalists would have to be escorted wherever they went in the building, and all of their reports would have to be approved by government screeners. They would have to sign a form acknowledging the restrictions. Violations would be punished by the revocation of press credentials.
The memo told the reporters that they would no longer be permitted to function as journalists. For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, they would be unable to move freely and talk to whoever was available. Worst of all, even their most innocuous articles and scripts would be subject to a censor’s pen. They would, in essence, become stenographers.
In our system, where freedom of the press is written into the Constitution, the government has long allowed reporters to do their jobs on federal property. Sometimes this involves attending scheduled briefings, like the ones you’ve seen broadcast from the White House Press Room. But it’s vital to remember that most of the important reporting -- interviews and research -- is done away from those official events. This work is done by journalists who build rapport with people they meet, who then may become reliable insider sources. It’s these inside sources who provide the news that the politicians (and most top bureaucrats) would prefer to keep out of view.
A typical example arose at the end of November when Washington Post defense and national security reporters Noah Robertson and Tara Copp broke the startling story about the September 2nd double-tap attack on the supposed drug smugglers. In their article, they wrote:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive,
according to two people with direct knowledge of the
operation. “The order was to kill everybody,” one of them said.
In the days since the original report, Hegseth has denied giving the order, seemingly shifting the legal and moral burden onto the commander of the operation, Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley. The story is still unfolding, but there’s no doubt that Robertson and Copp uncovered and published news about an important event that merits public attention. Their work depended on sources who would not trust “journalists” like Gaetz and O’Keefe, who have agreed to be held captive by Department of Defense officials.
Admiral Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley
The new guys in the Pentagon press room are occupying spaces vacated in mid-October as mainstream reporters faced a deadline for signing onto the restrictions in the memo. Dozens of them turned in their badges and walked out. Among them were journalists for all the major newspapers and TV networks, including Fox News. (As you know, Fox’s nightly program hosts favor the administration, but its news operation tries to play it… slightly…more straight.) Days ago, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department and Hegseth, alleging its rights were violated.
You don’t have to love The New York Times to understand where your sympathies should lie. With Congress in GOP hands and the courts giving the administration almost everything it wants, the press is the one institution that reliably defends our democracy. In creating his own press corps, Hegseth is striking a blow for dictatorship.
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