On Tuesday, the Pentagon press shop asked reporters to sign a pledge that they would only report information approved by Defense Department bureaucrats. The idea is to give journalists the option of becoming stenographers — or losing access to the building. When this gambit inevitably backfires, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth can look to the White House for a better model.
A Pentagon spokesman said it was common sense that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.” Maybe in Russia or China, but not in America. The press is deeply unpopular, and media access is not exactly a top voting issue.
But this kind of restriction would block some of the most important stories in modern times ...
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