War Secretary Pete Hegseth wants members of the media to make a “pledge” before they can continue covering he Pentagon.
This “Soviet”-style media “pledge” — as MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough termed it — was rejected by the fourth estate invoking Freedom of the Press, Mediaite reported.
Hegseth issued a memo late Friday which stated reporters needed to sign a new “In-Brief for Media Members” agreement. If not, they had surrender their Pentagon access cards by late Tuesday.
The agreement states journalists could not solicit tips, photograph, or even sketch what they see inside the building.
On Wednesday, after the deadline passed, Scarborough talked about the memo, stating media presence in the Pentagon was key to “protecting the men and women in uniform.”
One example of this was during the Vietnam War, he said.
Scarborough showed a clip of Retired General and former Vice Chief of Staff for the U.S. Army Jack Keane, who was on Fox News Tuesday night.
Keane criticized the new order. Scarborough agreed wholeheartedly.
“The important thing about that is the general is old enough to remember how the Pentagon lied repeatedly during the 1960s, across the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations,” he said. “It was constant lies every day and as a result of it 57,000 young men and some women died in Vietnam – predominantly men – died in the Vietnam war, that is a war that history now teaches us was built on lies. And what do reporters think, looking back? ‘We should have asked tougher questions. We should have pursued the truth more.’”
He continued by stating this is about “protecting the men and women in uniform.”
“This isn’t about Pete Hegseth or members of his family that don’t want the press around, this is about protecting the men and women in uniform from civilians that get put in positions and generals who may make bad boneheaded decisions – not only maliciously, but sometimes just because everybody’s human. They make mistakes,” Scarborough said.
“But in the Pentagon, when you make mistakes, you have men and women sacrificing for this country who die and the idea that these people are not to be asked questions?” he continued. “This is not the Soviet Union. This is the United States of America. Thank you very much.”
