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FAIR
View article on FAIR's website ([link removed])
Pentagon Creates New Legion of PR Toadies Ari Paul ([link removed])
CNN: Journalists turn in press passes as Pentagon clamps down on access in ‘unprecedented’ move

The professional organization Military Reporters & Editors (CNN, 10/15/25 ([link removed]) ) called the new press restrictions “an unprecedented attack on the First Amendment and on the American people, who deserve accurate reporting on how the world’s largest military is funded and managed with their tax dollars.”

When the Pentagon announced that reporters would only be credentialed if they pledged not to report on documents not expressly released by official press handlers, free press advocates, including FAIR (9/23/25 ([link removed]) ), denounced the directive as an assault on the First Amendment.

The impact of this rule cannot be understated—any reporter agreeing to such terms is essentially a deputized public relations lackey.

Many journalists, thankfully, displayed solidarity with each other and the idea of a free press when they resisted the state’s new censorship efforts. “Dozens of reporters turned in access badges and exited the Pentagon…rather than agree to government-imposed restrictions on their work ([link removed]) ,” reported the AP (10/15/25 ([link removed]) ).

CNN’s Brian Stelter (10/15/25 ([link removed]) ) reported:

A flyer with the words “journalism is not a crime” appeared Tuesday on the wall outside the “Correspondents’ Corridor” where journalists operate at the Pentagon. It was a silent protest of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new policy that severely restricts press access.

Reuters: US news outlets reject Pentagon press access policy

Donald Trump (Reuters, 10/15/25 ([link removed]) ) explained the new Pentagon press policy by saying Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth "finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace and maybe security for our nation."

The policy criminalizes routine reporting, according to media lawyers and advocates, so news outlets are refusing to abide by it. Instead, they are giving up their access to the building, while vowing to continue thoroughly covering Hegseth and the military from outside the Pentagon’s five walls.

Reuters (10/15/25 ([link removed]) ) noted that it and at least 30 other outlets refused to sign the pledge, citing the others:

Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, Axios, Politico, the Guardian, the Atlantic, The Hill, Newsmax, Breaking Defense and Task & Purpose.

Good on these outlets for showing some spine against an administration for whom anti-media bellicosity ([link removed]) has been a central feature of its authoritarian impulse. It’s a sign that perhaps at least some of them can toughen up against the administration’s threats against democratic and constitutional order. Even some outlets on the right--Murdoch properties Fox News and Wall Street Journal, and Christopher Ruddy's Newsmax--declined to be part of Hegseth's captive news corps.


** 'The new Pentagon press corps'
------------------------------------------------------------
New Republic: Hegseth Announces New Pentagon Press Corps Full of Right-Wing Grifters

Malcolm Ferguson (New Republic, 10/22/25 ([link removed]) ): "It should alarm every American that the defense secretary is making an effort to fill the press corps with people who will never hold him accountable."

However, the Pentagon is touting the success of its draconian order. "Today, the Department of War is announcing the next generation of the Pentagon press corps," Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced on X (10/22/25 ([link removed]) ):

Over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists, have signed the Pentagon’s media access policy and will be joining the new Pentagon press corps….

New media outlets and independent journalists have created the formula to circumvent the lies of the mainstream media and get real news directly to the American people. Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon. Americans have largely abandoned digesting their news through the lens of activists who masquerade as journalists in the mainstream media. We look forward to beginning a fresh relationship with members of the new Pentagon press corps.

In fact, this "broad spectrum" of outlets represents the fringes of the right, including One America Network, Epoch Times, Gateway Pundit, Human Events, LindellTV, Frontlines and the National Pulse (New York Times, 10/22/25 ([link removed]) ).

These outlets are old and new. Human Events ([link removed]) shaped its worldview in early Cold War nationalism. Frontlines is a project ([link removed]) of the late Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. LindellTV is the brainchild of MyPillow CEO and 2020 election denialist Mike Lindell (Guardian, 5/4/25 ([link removed]) ; BBC, 6/19/25 ([link removed]) ).

The Times quoted LindellTV bragging about its elevation into the halls of power in twisted, Orwellian speak: “We are officially part of the new Pentagon press corps, this is a major win for free speech and real journalism.”

The Gateway Pundit blog has been around since 2004, long enough to have pushed birther conspiracy theories ([link removed]) before it promoted 2020 stolen election theories ([link removed]) . National Pulse (slogan: "radically independent") is more recent, founded and edited by a former chief advisor ([link removed]) to British far-right leader Nigel Farage.

One America Network, which FAIR founder Jeff Cohen observed "makes Fox News sound like Democracy Now!," was founded in 2013 so that AT&T could add a second right-wing network to its DirecTV platform (FAIR.org, 10/15/21 ([link removed]) ). Epoch Times ([link removed]) is affiliated with China's Falun Gong movement, and comes to its Trumpy politics through Chinese anti-Communism.

Conspiracy outlet InfoWars—famous for losing a $1.4 billion defamation judgement for falsely stating the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was faked (Reuters, 10/14/25 ([link removed]) ), as well as something about chemicals turning frogs gay (InfoWars, 8/28/24 ([link removed]) )—is also reportedly in the revamped press pool. “Breanna Morello is responsible for covering the Pentagon on behalf of Infowars and will do so from outside of DC,” the Hill (10/23/25 ([link removed]) ) reported.


** 'Maximum lethality'
------------------------------------------------------------
Bloomberg: How Trump’s Use of Military at Home Tests His Powers

The Trump administration is throwing real reporters out of the Pentagon even as Trump is using the military in unprecedented ways (Bloomberg, 10/6/25 ([link removed]) ).

This new directive didn’t come about in a vacuum; the Pentagon is closing its doors to the press, and by extension the rest of the public, at a time of ramping up violence off the coasts of South America (AP, 10/22/25 ([link removed]) ) and elsewhere. Hegseth couldn’t have been clearer in his recent speech ([link removed]) to the military’s top officers when he said the Pentagon’s only mission was “warfighting, preparing for war and preparing to win, unrelenting and uncompromising in that pursuit,” highlighting a focus on “common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.”

President Donald Trump, despite his claims of ending wars (CNN, 10/17/25 ([link removed]) ), is certainly acting like he wants more war in the future, a crucial development for the public. “Trump Beats the Drums of War for Direct Action in Venezuela,” rang a headline in the Washington Post (10/22/25 ([link removed]) ), with the subhead:

The administration has surged warships, planes and troops to the Caribbean for drug interdiction. Some see the ultimate goal as toppling Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

The Trump administration has already carried out attacks on Iran (Axios, 6/22/25 ([link removed]) ) and Yemen (BBC, 4/18/25 ([link removed]) ). And the administration “continues to expand troop deployments to US cities, escalating a campaign to assert military power at home with little precedent in US history” (Bloomberg, 10/6/25 ([link removed]) ).

The Economist (10/23/25 ([link removed]) ) warned that the Trump administration, which has invoked cartel violence to justify the president’s lethal hostility toward Venezuela (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 10/3/25 ([link removed]) ), was turning the War on Drugs into a full-scale, international military campaign with little restraint. The magazine said:

Past presidents have also stretched their powers to wage wars and even to start them. Indeed, Mr. Trump is gesturing at precedents they set. But “this administration is going further, and going further with less public, detailed defense of what they’re doing,” says Peter Feaver, a political scientist at Duke University. “I think the biggest difference is that Congress is not holding this administration to account in the way that they did even to Trump 1.0, let alone to Biden and to Bush.”

Just because Mr. Trump has labeled some migrants and even leftist opponents as “terrorists” does not mean he will use the armed forces against them. But right now, it’s not clear what, besides his own inclinations, might prevent him.

This new loyalty pledge has now chipped away at another restraint: the press. It is true, as many FAIR readers know, that the Pentagon has sold wars to the public through the establishment media without these draconian credentialing pledges (Extra!, 1–2/90 ([link removed]) , 11–12/90 ([link removed]) , 7–8/99 ([link removed]) ; FAIR.org, 3/19/07 ([link removed]) ). However, what we are likely to see now is an army of meme-obsessed, MAGA sycophants posing as independent journalists obediently copy-and-pasting Pentagon press releases into articles, selling an imperialist agenda to the president’s right-wing, nationalist base. That’s chilling news for those of us living here, and for any country that might sit in the crosshairs of the Trump administration’s imperial ambitions.

There is some hope that military reporters will continue to do their jobs and receive information from the inside via channels that exist outside the actual walls of the Pentagon. Atlantic correspondent Nancy Youseff (10/15/25 ([link removed]) ), one of the recently departed from the official pool, said “mid-level troops have been reaching out to me, unsolicited, and promising that they would keep providing journalists with information” in order to “uphold the values embedded in the Constitution.”

If legacy publications are truly horrified by these developments, they will get more creative in their methods of reporting when it comes to the Pentagon’s advances. That can result in more critical and less obedient coverage of the war machine, which would be a good thing, for once.



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