The New York Times did something Thursday we haven’t seen enough of as President Donald Trump and his administration continue to strip away press freedoms.
They took the fight to the administration.
In a sign that they are sick and tired and aren’t going to take it anymore, the Times filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon, claiming that their First Amendment rights are being violated by the Pentagon’s new press restrictions.
In order to work from inside the Pentagon, reporters had to sign a new policy, unveiled back in September, that prohibits journalists from accessing or soliciting information that the Defense Department doesn’t make available to them, including unclassified information.
Of course, every legitimate news outlet refused to sign the new policy, and now the press corps with access to the Pentagon is made up of conservative sycophants from places such as One America News, The Federalist and LindellTV.
But now the Times is fighting back.
In their suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the Times alleges that the Pentagon’s new policy “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done — ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements.”
NPR’s David Folkenflik noted, “The paper also alleges that the Pentagon violated its reporters' constitutionally protected rights to due process by making a decision on press passes out of the blue and without any path to appeal.”
The New York Times’ Eric Wemple reported, “In a press briefing on Wednesday, a senior Times lawyer said that there had been discussions with other news organizations about joining the suit but that the newspaper had decided to proceed alone.”
However, press freedom organizations are rallying around the Times.
Trevor Timm, executive director for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement, “An attack on any journalist’s rights is an attack on all. And the only way to put an end to the Trump administration’s multipronged assault on press freedom is for every news outlet to fight back at every opportunity. We urge other news outlets to follow the Times’ lead.”
Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, said in a statement, “No government agency, let alone the Department of Defense, should be permitted to manipulate reporting by deciding which journalists get to ask questions and which are removed from the building because they are not sufficiently fawning.This legal challenge — and the continued, relentless reporting by journalists pushed out of the Pentagon — sends a clear message that an independent press will not be sidelined, with or without a Pentagon press badge. This lawsuit is a crucial step toward restoring transparency at the Pentagon and reaffirming the democratic principle that the public has a right to know what its military is doing. We stand with The New York Times and with all news organizations defending press freedom.”
And Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders USA said, “It's great to see The New York Times continue to proactively defend press freedom in the courts as well as on their pages. We all know by now that capitulation to Donald Trump's authoritarian impulses never works out, but fighting back will. This is the logical next step after the mass refusal of journalists to sign Secretary of Defense Hegseth's loyalty pledge. Journalists must be able to cover the government critically and freely.”
In a statement, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said, “We are aware of The New York Times lawsuit and look forward to addressing these arguments in court.”
Folkenflik added one more important note: “Despite surrendering their Pentagon credentials, news organizations have been aggressively reporting on military action, including U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites and Venezuelan vessels, breaking news that contradicts official accounts.”
Saying the wrong thing
A couple weeks back, my wife was furious about something she heard while listening to NPR’s “Morning Edition.” While discussing a story about Jeffrey Epstein on Nov. 18, host Steve Inskeep described the victims in the sex-trafficking case as "underage women." My wife suggested I mention it to my Poynter colleague, Kelly McBride, who also serves as NPR’s public editor.
I didn’t need to. My wife was hardly alone in her outrage about teenage girls being described as “underage women.” Social media and many NPR listeners jumped on the word choice, and it was widespread enough that McBride’s latest NPR Public Editor column addressed the controversy.
In her excellent commentary, McBride wrote, “People under age 18 are not ‘young women’ or ‘young men.’ And terms like ‘underage women’ are an oxymoron.”
McBride noted, “People on social media immediately criticized the word choice. That conversation came to the attention of a news executive, who instructed the ‘Morning Edition’ team to re-record a portion of the introduction for the ‘Up First’ podcast and subsequent cycles of the ‘Morning Edition’ broadcast, replacing the inaccurate term with the word ‘minors.’ So the error was quickly fixed.”
Still, it was a bad look for the program.
In her column, McBride talks with Eric Marrapodi, NPR vice president for news programming, and gets some explanations as to what happened and how the awful phrasing made it on air.
Initially, McBride wrote, “Marrapodi said it is impossible to tell who from ‘Morning Edition’ actually inserted the inaccurate words into the script.”
I found Marrapodi’s assertion difficult to believe.
Later, however, Marrapodi clarified his comments, telling McBride that several people collaborated on the script and so he's not assigning responsibility to a single person.
Ultimately, what matters is that Marrapodi did the right thing and took responsibility by telling McBride, “As the executive in charge of the show, I am responsible for ensuring that process is working across teams. I am accountable for this one and take responsibility for it. We are talking with our teams and taking steps to ensure our process is working effectively across the board.”
I encourage everyone to check out McBride’s smart column for more details and insight.
Scathing Substack
Steve Schmidt, the former Republican strategist who went on to co-found The Lincoln Project in opposition to Donald Trump, has a new Substack piece that absolutely pulverizes CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings, who worked in the George W. Bush White House. A regular on CNN’s “NewsNight with Abby Phillip,” Jennings is usually at the center of a performative and unhealthy show that often devolves into insults, sarcasm and shouting over political differences. (I would add Jennings is the chief reason why the show is so negative.)
Schmidt writes, “Scott Jennings is a man who has no character, integrity, principles or values. He has sold out his country for fame, money and proximity to power because inside he is hollow.”
Schmidt then goes through many examples that are the basis for his low opinion of Jennings. He closes his piece by writing, “Scott Jennings is a Nazi who shills for a fascist.”
A blazing bad look
On Nov. 8, The Blaze — the conservative media outlet founded by Glenn Beck — posted a story suggesting that the person responsible for planting pipe bombs outside both the Republican and Democratic National Committees the night before the Jan. 6 insurrection was possibly a former law enforcement official. The reporting was largely based on computer analysis of the way the person walked. They even mentioned the individual by name.
Even at the time, FBI deputy director Dan Bongino pushed back on X and wrote, “some of the media reporting regarding prior persons of interest is grossly inaccurate and serves only to mislead the public.” He added the investigation was still continuing.
The New York Times’ Glenn Thrush wrote, “The editors at The Blaze defended their reporting but hedged some of their claims.”
The person identified in The Blaze story, it turned out, had a solid alibi. Video later surfaced of the accused at home playing with their dogs when the crime was committed.
Then on Thursday, federal agents arrested someone in the case. Spoiler alert: it was not the person mentioned in The Blaze article. Social media blasted The Blaze after Thursday’s news of an arrest.
The xxxxxx’s Will Sommer tweeted, “Big news in the Jan 6th pipe bomber case — and very bad news for the Blaze's story suggesting the pipe bomber was a female ex-Capitol Police officer.”
Billy Binion from The Reason tweeted, “The Blaze should shut down in disgrace. They built their brand decrying ‘fake news,’ only to publish a ludicrous hit piece tarring an innocent woman for this because they desperately wanted to believe it was an inside job. Humiliating.”
On and on it went.
And check out Mediate’s Isaac Schoor with “Blaze Media Is an Embarrassment to Conservatives.”
Then this happened Thursday night, The Blaze retracted their original story. In their retraction, they wrote, “At all times, the reporting adhered to professional journalistic standards and was published with a good-faith belief in its truth. Even so, in light of Thursday’s developments and the FBI’s arrest of another individual, Virginia resident Brian Cole Jr., in connection with the Capitol pipe-bomb incident, we consider the values of fairness and accuracy to require retraction of this article.”
But you can't help but wonder if too much damage has already been done.
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