The journalists have left the Pentagon. They turned in their access badges and cleared out their offices. Correspondents have worked in the Pentagon for decades, but now all the legitimate news organizations have surrendered their access rather than sign rules restricting their rights to freedom of the press.
To summarize briefly, Pete Hegseth, U.S. Defense Secretary, has required the journalists reporting on the Pentagon to sign new agreements and rules going forward in their tenure of reporting on the Pentagon. Their response? To turn in their badges and move out of their offices. Journalists from virtually every news organization left, rather than submit to rules infringing on their right to free reporting. Even, somewhat surprisingly, the more conservative outlets like Fox News.
In a joint statement including ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX and NBC, the news organizations said “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.”
These news organizations came together as journalists to reject this new policy for its infringement on protections of the press.
What’s so bad about this policy? First, it is the government infringing on the press’s first amendment rights to report on the government.
Kara Gould, a Samford journalism professor who currently teaches mass media law, believes that the first amendment is one of the most important laws in our nation.
“Free speech was the first [amendment] because they [the founders] felt it was absolutely necessary to have dialogue, to have the press cover communities and also serve as watchdog of the government,” she said.
Gould sees these rules as infringing on the right to freedom of the press, since they are being imposed by a governmental figure.
The second reason this policy is concerning is because the first amendment is in place to protect against tyrannical government, propaganda and censorship. It is both the right and duty of the press to be watchdogs of the government.
Any journalism that is bound to agree by written rules of the institution it reports about ceases to be true journalism. It becomes a glorified PR agency freely distributing what the institution wants the world to know/believe. If the Pentagon needed a new publisher for its press releases, it could have found an easier way.
The third reason this policy scares me is because any rules imposed by governmental figures on journalism can be a slippery slope leading to further censorship.
The repression of information is a hallmark of a censored world. The control of language and speech and press can lead to an attempt to control thoughts and ideas and actions. The press is protected by the constitution to be the watchdog of the government.
Further unsettling was a week later when the Pentagon announced its “new generation” of Pentagon reporters. They presented them proudly. A generation of ‘journalists’ including influencers, bloggers, podcasters and conspiracy theorists. A generation of regurgitators, not truth seekers.
Some people may be thinking that I’m being dramatic. The rules weren’t that severe, the journalists can still report, they just have less access. I think that the fact that rules were even put in place in the first place is pointing in a dangerous direction. Even if the rules themselves are not that restrictive, the concept of imposing rules on journalists should be deplored. Any attempt by the government to restrict journalists should immediately ring alarm bells.
Can the press be biased and malicious and publish false information? Yes. However, the alternative is worse — the alternative being a society where all published news is straight from the mouth of the government. How is society supposed to be informed when the only things they know are carefully curated bits of press releases? The only thing we can do at this point is support the work of true journalists and be wary of those trying to suppress it.
News Editor
