I visited the Pentagon on Wednesday to turn in my access badge. After covering the building in various capacities for almost a decade, my pass was revoked because I didn't want to sign new rules barring journalists from “soliciting” sensitive information, aka being journalists.
Most news outlets covering the Defence Department also deemed the restrictions unworkable and surrendered their access to the mega-office complex in Virginia that once prided itself on giving access to journalists covering the military, an unusual arrangement and an important statement in the land of the First Amendment.
That all changed under Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, himself a former presenter at Fox News, who systematically worked to marginalise the press over fears of leaks and negative coverage. In his nine months on the job, he has held just two formal press briefings and has angrily lashed out against reporters asking difficult questions.
Many viewed his clampdown as ironic, given that the biggest leak this year came from Mr Hegseth himself, who inadvertently shared Yemen war plans with a journalist on an unsecured Signal group chat.
I returned my badge a few days after most journalists because I was out of the country last week. Before handing in my pass, I had one final opportunity to visit the “bullpen” – the shared space where radio and print journalists had worked in the heart of the trillion-dollar Defence Department. All that remained of decades of toil were abandoned keyboards, reference books, internet cables and office detritus. Photos of reporters interacting with previous defence secretaries had been ripped from the walls of the Correspondents' Corridor, leaving only empty frames stuck to the walls.
The mood was sombre in the room next to the bullpen where about two dozen military and civilian press officers usually sit and field questions on everything from Centcom to materiel acquisitions. More than half the seats were empty as the civilian workers have been furloughed amid the government shutdown, now in its fourth week. The military press officers were downbeat without any reporters to talk to.
It seemed like an ignominious end for a press corps that has given everything – many war correspondents have been killed doing their jobs – to cover the American military for more than eight decades.
Their work and sacrifice presumably meant little to Mr Hegseth, who has rebranded the Department of Defence as the Department of War and obsesses about “lethality”, the “warrior ethos” and the failings of “fat” troops and “wokeness”. He posted a waving-hand emoji on social media after outlets announced their decision to pull their Pentagon correspondents from the building.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell on Wednesday issued a statement announcing the press corps’ “next generation” – a jumble of 60 bloggers, independent journalists and right-wing outlets that will presumably provide the kind of adulatory coverage Mr Hegseth craves.
“Their reach and impact collectively are far more effective and balanced than the self-righteous media who chose to self-deport from the Pentagon,” Mr Parnell wrote.
Of course, coverage of the Pentagon will continue from outside the building.
But the loss of a resident press corps with decades’ worth of collective experience covering war and the military-industrial complex marks a sobering moment as US President Donald Trump’s administration works to sideline any and all criticism.
