by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk:
The Pentagon’s new restrictions on reporters are outrageous and unconstitutional.
Pentagon Gears Up for a Fight
The Pentagon said it would forbid reporters from gathering any information that had not been authorized for release, and would revoke press passes from any journalists who did not obey.
The New York Times reports Read the Pentagon’s New Restrictions on Reporters
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
That’s a free link to the 17-page document.
First Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) comments The Pentagon Press Gears Up for a Fight
Pentagon reporters are scrambling to come up with a response to an unprecedented policy restricting how they cover the military, as a deadline to sign a pledge not to report on unauthorized information looms.
The policy, issued by the Department of Defense in a seventeen-page memo on September 18, demands that journalists covering the Pentagon sign a document promising to report only on material “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official, even if it is unclassified.” Failure to do so by September 30 would result in the loss of their “hard pass,” the coveted press credential that permits certain reporters regular, unescorted access to the building. Pentagon officials recently told reporters they could request an additional five days to “consult with legal counsel” before the policy would be enforced.
One editor of a military-oriented publication told CJR that they had “heard of discussions taking place” about a legal challenge, and noted that their staff was not likely to comply with the new policy if it goes fully into effect. “Securing access to the Pentagon, to the building, is not worth giving up the ability to write more than press releases and official statements,” the editor said. “I think that we’re all kind of expecting to just get kicked out of the building,” said another member of the Pentagon press corps. “None of us are signing this pledge.”
The restrictive policy is not the first time Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former television commentator, has wrestled with the press. In January, Hegseth ordered a reshuffling of the long-standing arrangements of the Pentagon press offices, evicting the Times, NPR, and Politico from their dedicated workspaces and replacing them with Breitbart News and the One America News Network. He’s also struggled to contain leaks and critical reports about his leadership, including his own private Signal chats—inadvertently shared with the editor of The Atlantic.
Reporters who cover the Pentagon describe an atmosphere of tension and anxiety throughout the building, with normally talkative sources afraid to speak. “The fear is palpable,” said Thomas Brennan, the founder and executive director of the military-focused site The War Horse. “I would say the resistance to talk is stronger than it’s ever been before, at least in my thirteen years. There’s a real fear of retaliation.” The member of the Pentagon press corps agreed: “I don’t really expect to have good conversations on the phone anymore, especially with people who are in the building, because there’s a fear that people could be listening. There’s definitely a culture of fear.”
Seth Stern, the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, says the Pentagon’s new policy looks like a classic case of unconstitutional prior restraint, and should therefore be vulnerable to legal challenge. “Usually, prior restraints are aimed at a particular document,” he said. “So this is broader than you would typically see.” The policy also fundamentally warps the role of journalism in covering government agencies, Stern added. “It’s not the journalists’ burden to keep the government’s secrets for it,” he said. “That is the opposite of the press’s job, which is to tell the public what the government doesn’t want the public told. The government cannot condition a benefit on forfeiture of First Amendment rights.”
Hegseth Tries Turning Back 94 Years of Press Freedom
Bloomberg comments Hegseth Tries Turning Back 94 Years of Press Freedom
In a 17-page memo that journalists will now be required to undertake only to publish material that has been “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official, even if it is unclassified.” If they don’t sign this undertaking, they lose their access to the building and all military facilities, and with it their ability to cover the defense policy of the world’s largest military power.
“National security” doesn’t arise as an issue; of course the military has an interest in keeping plans for its next operation secret but such information is classified, and this policy now seeks to control even unclassified information.
To justify the measure, Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, channeled this distrust: “The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do.”
In the Pentagon Papers case, the New York Times and Washington Post won the right to publish a critical analysis of the war in Vietnam that the defense establishment had decided not to publish.
It’s not a question of whether the people or the press controls the department, as Hegseth frames it, but rather whether the press should be able to monitor it on behalf of the people.
Under the current interpretation of the First Amendment, American journalists have charted the disasters in Vietnam, the horrible mistakes in Iraq and the abuses in Abu Ghraib jail in 2003, and Joe Biden’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan in 2021. It would have been difficult if not impossible for them to do these things had Hegseth’s rules been in force.
Justice Hugo Black on the Pentagon Papers
The last opinion written by Justice Hugo Black before his death was on the Pentagon Papers.
Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.
Pentagon Papers – New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971)
Please consider JUSTIA US Supreme Court review of New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971) Hugo Black
In seeking injunctions against these newspapers, and in its presentation to the Court, the Executive Branch seems to have forgotten the essential purpose and history of the First Amendment. When the Constitution was adopted, many people strongly opposed it because the document contained no Bill of Rights to safeguard certain basic freedoms. They especially feared that the new powers granted to a central government might be interpreted to permit the government to curtail freedom of religion, press, assembly, and speech.
