Spokesperson calls journalists who refused to agree to new rules ‘self-righteous media who chose to self-deport’
Eric Berger at The Guardian:
After the recent departure of Pentagon reporters due to their refusal to agree to a new set of restrictive policies, the defense department has announced a “next generation of the Pentagon press corps” featuring 60 journalists from far-right outlets, many of which have promoted conspiracy theories.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell posted the news on X but did not provide any names.
The Washington Post, however, obtained a draft of the announcement, which stated that the new reporters, who agreed to the department’s new policies, were from outlets such as Lindell TV, started by Trump ally Mike Lindell; the Gateway Pundit; the Post Millennial; Human Events; and the National Pulse.
The list also includes Turning Point USA’s media brand Frontlines, influencer Tim Pool’s Timcast and a Substack-based newsletter called Washington Reporter, the Post reported.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for the list of journalists.
Parnell described the group as a “broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists”.
“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,” Parnell wrote. “Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon.”
The new press corps includes rightwing outlets that have promoted conspiracy theories. For example, the Gateway Pundit spread false information about the 2020 election and then settled a defamation lawsuit with two Georgia election workers it falsely accused of wrongdoing and admitted that there was no fraud in the election.
Similarly, Lindell denied the results of the election and was ordered to pay $2.3m to an employee of a voting machine company who sued him for defamation.
Pool, a conservative podcast host, was among the influencers who allegedly were associated with a US content creation company that was provided with nearly $10m from Russian state media employees to publish videos with messages in favor of Moscow’s interests and agenda.
Pool said they were “deceived and are victims”.
The journalists who turned in their press credentials earlier this month did so after the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, introduced a policy that required that they agree not to obtain unauthorized material and restricted access to certain areas unless accompanied by an official.
Outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Atlantic, as well as reporters from rightwing outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax, all refused to sign on to the new rules.
The Pentagon named new members of the press corps, and they all come from various far-right propaganda outlets such as The Gateway Pundit, The Post Millennial, Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, Real America’s Voice, and Lindell TV.
See Also:
Daily Kos: Pentagon’s new press corps is the stuff of nightmares
Military.com: After Others Departed, Pentagon Announces 'New' Press Corps Filled with Conservative News Outlets
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is stifling the Pentagon’s channels for public information and cutting off avenues for accountability as U.S.
Matt Gertz at MMFA:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is stifling the Pentagon’s channels for public information and cutting off avenues for accountability as U.S. forces deploy on missions of dubious legality that are fraught with potential danger.
President Donald Trump has sent federalized National Guard troops to multiple U.S. cities since the summer and threatened to send troops to many more. The U.S. military is massing forces in a potential precursor for regime change operations in Venezuela and recently began the extrajudicial killing of individuals on offshore vessels that officials claim, without evidence, are engaged in drug trafficking.
The public has a right to know about these deployments, which raise grave legal and constitutional questions.
But on Wednesday, Defense Department press secretary Sean Parnell announced “the next generation of the Pentagon press corps,” which he described as “over 60 journalists, representing a broad spectrum of new media outlets and independent journalists.”
That a government official trumpeted the debut of the new people who will be covering his department is a signal of just how much that press corps has been corrupted. Its new members are a motley crew predominantly composed of right-wing influencers and Trumpist outlets. Representatives of organizations like The Gateway Pundit and Infowars will replace what Parnell termed the “activists who masquerade as journalists” who turned in their passes last week rather than accepting his department's new restrictions on the press.
Credible defense reporters will continue striving to provide the public with information and insight on Pentagon operations. But they will do so in the face of Defense Department leaders who clearly prefer working with politically sympathetic conspiracy theorists and propagandists. The “new” Pentagon press corps’ coverage will likely range from pliant to sycophantic as its members seek to comfort their MAGA audiences.
The press isn’t the only target of the Pentagon’s campaign against transparency: Hegseth, driven by an apparent urge to limit the effectiveness and volume of oversight, has also launched an overhaul of the inspector general complaint system to curtail its investigations, and he issued a new policy that prevents military leaders from talking to members of Congress without prior approval.
[...]
Last month the Pentagon rolled out strict new guidelines for the press corps which warned that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified,” and threatened to strip access from anyone who violated that stricture. On the October 15 deadline to sign their acknowledgement of the new guidelines, journalists for dozens of outlets including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal instead turned in their press passes and left the building en masse.
“Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable,” Bowman noted.
But for Hegseth, that was the point — he wanted stenographers rather than watchdogs, and following the establishment of the new guidelines and the ensuing walkout, that’s exactly what he’s gotten. All the reporters who might consider themselves watchdogs have left the building. Even right-wing outlets Fox, Newsmax, The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, and the Washington Examiner drew a line and refused to sign the new guidelines to retain their access.
Those that did sign are, almost by definition, the type of willing administration lapdogs Hegseth wanted covering him from inside the building. They are, at times by their own admission, woefully incapable of doing investigative work that holds him to account — but they have the skills to promote his talking points and puff him up to their right-wing audiences.
DoD Secretary Pete Hegseth’s newly-enacted directive for Pentagon press corps has led to the decimation of the legacy Pentagon press corps.
Replacing those who refused to bend to Hegseth’s farcical directive are far-right outlets who’ll pump out propagandistic “reporting” such as The Gateway Pundit, The Federalist, OANN, and Lindell TV.
Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited antisemitic right-wing conspiracy theorist and serial hoaxer Jack Posobiec to accompa
Oliver Willis at Daily Kos:
Trump administration officials at the Pentagon invited antisemitic right-wing conspiracy theorist and serial hoaxer Jack Posobiec to accompany Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his trip to Europe.
The Washington Post reports that a planning document for Hegseth’s trip (where he provoked international ire by throwing Ukraine under the bus) included Posobiec among invited media, and that the decision to include the right-wing activist triggered “alarm among U.S. defense officials worried about the military being dragged into partisan warfare.”
Posobiec is currently employed by the far-right Human Events as a “senior editor” and previously worked for the pro-Trump One America News Network. On his X social media account, Posobiec has on multiple occasions attacked Jewish journalists with antisemitic content.
[...]
In addition to the travel plans with Hegseth, Posobiec also accompanied recently installed Trump Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on his trip to Kiev, Ukraine.
Hegseth was elevated to his position leading the Defense department thanks to his years at Fox News. Posobiec is similarly a product of the right-wing media world. By granting access to the hoaxster and bigot, Hegseth is helping to mainstream the conspiracies and falsehoods that have long been the hallmark of conservative media.
Kremlin puppet Pete Hegseth inviting raving antisemitic Pizzagate loon Jack Posobiec to join him is whole level of insanity.
JTN Networks, the parent company of Just the News, has acquired the Human Events and The Post Millennial, uniting news brands on the right.
Ted Johnson at Deadline:
JTN Networks, the parent company of Just the News, has acquired the Human Events and The Post Millennial, uniting news brands on the right.
Human Events, which was founded in 1944 and has more recently featured columns and podcasts from Jack Posobiec, the MAGA influencer, will end daily publication this month and will be transformed into a virtual and live events platform, including ticket, music and movie sales and daily event programming, according to JTN Network’s CEO Mark Meckler. John Solomon, the founder of Just the News, will serve as chief strategy and content officer and board chairman.
The Post Millennial, a Canadian online website, was founded in 2017 but later acquired by Human Events Media Group. Jeff Webb, the previous owner of Human Events and The Post Millennial, will serve as key strategic adviser and will help develop the new events platform. He launched Varsity, he cheerleading company that organizes competitions and sells apparel.
Right-wing propaganda mill Just The News’s parent company JTN Networks buys a pair of right-wing sites in The Post Millennial and Human Events.
When deciding who to vote for in November, what should we base our decision on? What considerations should we let sway us, and what considerations should we ignore? You might think the answer should have something to do with our values, beliefs, and convictions—and you’d be right. But some on the left are actually trying to make the case that voters should put all that aside. Instead, we should base critical political decisions (like who should be the President) on how likely they are to elicit violent reactions from the left.
Last Friday, Cathy Young, a contributing editor at Reason magazine and Arc Digital, took issue with President Trump’s order to end diversity training based on Critical Race Theory in federal agencies. “There is plenty wrong with the ideology and practice of most forms of racial sensitivity training,” she acknowledges, but, according to Young, “recruiting Trump to fight this war is the worst possible move.” She believes that doing so risks triggering the reaction of progressive politicians and activists against President Trump’s move. The President’s opponents will “rally in defense of diversity training,” she writes, so “the anti-Trump backlash may actually strengthen such programs.”
Then, on Sunday, Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, argued in the Atlantic that even “law and order Republicans” should prefer a Biden victory. Like Young, Hamid’s concern was how Democrats would react. For Democrats, losing the November election will “undermine faith in democracy, resulting in more of the social unrest and street battles that cities including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have seen in recent months. For this reason, strictly law-and-order Republicans who have responded in dismay to scenes of rioting and looting have an interest in Biden winning.”
…
Young and Hamid have something right: at this critical moment in American history, we face a warlike foe. But we shouldn’t capitulate. We should make our decisions in accordance with our convictions and be prepared to fight back against those who’ll oppose them. We should position ourselves as wartime conservatives. After all, soldiers and nations have made the ultimate sacrifice, facing conflict and likely death to stand for truth and justice. Even if we risk mass violence, civil war, or succession by siding with the same, we’d be cowards for doing otherwise.
…
People oppose wokism because its claims are untrue and its actions unjust. Woke discourse casts people into groups ordered hierarchically by the level of oppression they’re deemed to have suffered, running roughshod over considerations of individual justice. It insists on an ideological and naive view of history, and it proceeds by trying to shame those who resist it into acceptance. In 2016, President Trump’s base rejected the Democrats because they were wandering off the woke cliff, as Clinton’s attack on “the racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic” deplorables amply demonstrated. We rejected establishment Republicans because they failed to contend with wokeness entirely, focusing instead on issues of limited government and free markets. At the same time, the left achieved dominance in all domains of cultural formation (K-12 education, universities, Hollywood, the media, etc.).
We chose president Trump because he fought back against wokeness, explicitly: bucking political correctness entirely (stating plainly, for instance, an immigration policy millions of citizens were yearning for) and refusing to bend to woke ways of manipulation. That this movement has led to “an increasingly militant cultural left” confirms the wartime conservative’s assessment of the left. Young’s tepid anti-wokism is not adequate to the threat that wokism poses. Tyranny doesn’t abate when you remove resistance to it.
So yes, the left will absolutely “rally in defense of diversity training” when confronted with President Trump’s recent order. But that’s not a reason not to endorse the executive order: it’s why we absolutely must throw our support behind it. An animal roars loudest when it’s wounded.
…
What Hamid fails to reckon with is that we voted for President Trump in 2016 precisely to teach the establishment class that their entire political culture is failing our country. The Democrats’ behavior since 2016 demonstrates that they’re failed to learn their lesson. While Hamid would abandon the lesson entirely, wartime conservatives think it should be taught again (and again, and again, and again).
Of course, we recognize the danger posed to the country by an outraged left; there’s no confusion there. But for wartime conservatives, the fear of leftist outrage is silenced by our commitment to the belief that Democrats should “process a Trump victory.” If Democrats won’t listen to what their opponents are saying in the public sphere, they should be made to hear their voice at the ballot box until they do. That’s how properly functioning democracies work. They should be taught their lesson until they recognize that their moral vision needs amending.
…
Hamid, however, only considers that the country will be safer by appeasing the left—he fails to ask what kind of country we’d be saving by doing so. A big worry for him is that, for Democrats, a Trump re-election “would provoke mass disillusion with electoral politics as a means of change.” He notes that Republican politicians will be more willing to acknowledge a Biden victory than Democrats will be to acknowledge a Trump victory, an asymmetry that will be mirrored in the media. “There’s a lot of right-of-center journalists and right-of-center commentators who’ll respect a Biden victory in a way that left-of-center journalists will not respect a Trump victory,” he explained in a podcast foreshadowing his editorial. He concludes that the gap between what the country is and what it ought to be will appear greater to Democrats under a Trump presidency than it’ll appear to Republicans under a Biden presidency. This is why Democrat losers will be more despairing of democracy, and “this has implications for mass unrest and political violence across American cities.”
…
A Biden victory, Hamid postulates, will lead to a cold civil war within the Democratic Party instead of a hot one on our streets. The ‘woke anger’ of the radical left will transfer onto Biden centrists instead of Trumpists. Hamid sees this as “a more pro-democracy outcome, for that’s not really questioning the democratic system.”
Hamid’s argument here is absurd: if Democrats lose a fair democratic election, they’ll despair of democracy. The deciding factor in the election should be whether Democratic voters are left “questioning the democratic system.” Essentially, we must vote Biden to coddle the American Democrat.
Never mind that these Democrats are falsely and unjustly claiming that democracy is now in question. (Hamid flat out denies that these facts matter: “We can debate that, but…”) What’s important to ‘guardians of democracy’ like Hamid is only that Democrats “will lose their shit and lose their minds.” That they’ll do so because “they can no longer think rationally” and will obstinately refuse to recognize the results of a fair election is, for some reason, to be ignored.
…
The radical left has outsized institutional power today. Throughout the Trump Presidency, this year especially, they’ve converted their beachheads in our major institutions into dominance of them. Liberals blame this turn of events on Trump’s provocations, but, more than anything, what it demonstrates is the wartime conservative’s view that the radical left had to be squarely confronted. And it’s appeasement-thinking like Young’s and Hamid’s that allowed the radical left to establish such strong beachheads in the first place.
