Three current Pentagon Civil servants decided a new War Department policy that is designed to limit the freedom of the press. According to new rules, the Ministry of War said that it would prohibit reporters to collect information that was not approved for release and press release of journalists who did not obey.
A 17 -page document that explains the new guidelines says that journalists who want to report from the Pentagon must sign agreements that limit their movement in the building and decisive that they will not obtain or possess unauthorized material.
“Dow remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” says the Orwellian memorandum of the department.
Experts and current Pentagon officials call the rules a serious attack on freedom of the press.
A defense officer who spoke with the interception based on anonymity called the new policy a ‘spot of American ideals’. Another compared it with policy that was seen in some of the most repressive and unstable countries on the planet. “The idea that they want editorial control over the press is something that I expect from a banana republic is not the United States,” said the civil servant. A third said that the Minister of War Pete Hegseeth was accountable, referring to his earlier efforts to squeeze the army of the army.
“This is a direct attack on independent journalism where independent control is the most important: the US Army,” said National Press Club president Mike Balsamo in a statement. “If the news about our army must first be approved by the government, the public will no longer receive independent reports. It only gets some civil servants to see them. Every American should alert that.”
In a Friday after On X.com Hegseeth said that “the press is no longer allowed to wander through the corridors of a secure facility,” and that reporters “should bear a badge and follow the rules – or go home.”
The Ministry of War answered questions about the new policy of interception with a boilerplate statement. “These are simple, common sense guidelines for protecting sensitive information, as well as the protection of national security and safety of everyone who works at the Pentagon,” said spokesperson Sean Parnell of the Chief War Department.
“In accordance with not looking at where the government does not want you to look and, by extension, do not print what it does not want to print, propaganda, not journalism,” Seth Stern, the director of Advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation, told The Intercept.
“The government not only tries to limit specific documents that it claims is a unique threat, it tries to keep everything that the public does not want to know.”
Stern noted that the government prohibits legally prohibiting journalists that they exchange their rights to investigate the government in exchange for reporting access.
“This policy works as an earlier restriction on publication that is considered the most serious violations of the first amendment. As we have learned in the Pentagon Papers case, the government cannot forbid journalists to claim public information, only by claiming that it is a secret or even a national security threat,” Shall -host of the 1971 shop said, said from the Milklecht 1971. To publish a classified defense department. “This is worse in a certain way, because the government is not only looking for specific documents that it claims is a unique threat, it tries to limit everything that the audience does not want to know. That is fundamental On -Maaman.”
Hegseeth’s Pentagon promised Earlier this year to “always make our promise of transparency.” Hegseeth started several in February mainstream news Organizations from their offices on the Pentagon, including CNN, NPR, the New York Times and the Washington Post, in favor of conservative mouthpieces, such as Breitbart, Newsmax and One America News.
Although it did not specify points of sale by name, the defense officer who said that the new policy was mocking American ideals, ensured that some reporters self -censored to the favor at the war department in Curry. “Some of these so -called journalists are a joke,” said the officer.
Balsamo noted that the newest media performance “comes at a time when the nation witnesses a devastating erosion from the publications of the defense trade, just as rigorous, independent coverage of military and national security issues has never been so essential.”
Regular press briefings by the Pentagon Press Secretary or his deputy – a staple of previous years – have been abandoned in favor of propaganda pumped by Hegseeth” ParnellAnd press secretary Kingsley Wilson. Wilson repeatedly answers questions from the interception with variations on the expression: “Nothing for you about that.”
Early in his term of office, Hegseeth shared classified information about upcoming air strikes in Yemen in a private signal group treasure with his wife. He also announced Plan attack In a separate signal chat that Recorded the editor of the Atlantic Ocean.
The Pentagon was too leaky To the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk would receive a briefing about the war plans of the army with regard to China. That briefing was canceled and led to an investigation.
The new press policy coincides with the political correctness of the Ministry of War in the aftermath of the murder of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. The army takes disciplinary measures against both recruited troops and officers about posts on social media that they regard as the wrong attitude towards Kirk’s inheritance.
The actions of the Pentagon are part of a total war against freedom of expression by the Trump government. President Donald Trump recently submitted a $ 15 billion slander against the New York Times – who threw a federal judge on Friday, Call the complaint “Incorrect and unacceptable” in its current form. Trump too sued The Wall Street Journal in July for an article that describes his relationship with the chatter financier and sex trade Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump has previously sued CBS News and ABC News because of their reporting about him, who removed $ 16 million settlements from each. This week ABC apparently argued for threats from the Federal Communications Commission Brendan Carr about comments that Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live”, had made in the aftermath of Kirk’s murder. The network pulled Kimmels’ Late-Night Show out of the air ‘for an indefinite period’.
Stern said that the Trump government, just like its predecessors, often leans on vague national security claims to prevent lies from being exposed.
“Perhaps there are so many embarrassing documents at the moment that it is too difficult to continue to find fake reasons to keep each of them secret,” Stern said. “Perhaps that is the reason why the administration uses more a wholesaler approach to hide records that can show misconduct, corruption and incompetence.”
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