Pete Hegseth slammed for ‘direct attack’ in opposition to army reporters: ‘Never seen anything like this’ | EUROtoday

Donald Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is going through intense criticism from army reporters after his workplace introduced additional restrictions to media entry on the Pentagon.

The Pentagon Press Association — which represents reporters protecting the Department of Defense — mentioned in an announcement that the transfer was “a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

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Hegseth — a former Fox News host — introduced extra credentialing procedures would quickly be applied for the press on the Pentagon “in the interest of national security.”

Those new measures embrace making key components of the Pentagon off-limits to journalists except they’ve an official escort. The discover additionally mentioned extra safety measures and enhanced scrutiny of press members are incoming.

Top Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell mentioned on X that the adjustments had been “pragmatic” to guard operational safety.

But the press affiliation identified that journalists have had entry to “non-secured, unclassified spaces in the Pentagon for decades” beneath each Republican and Democratic administrations, together with within the aftermath of 9/11, when hijackers crashed a airplane into the constructing, killing all 64 folks onboard and 125 contained in the Pentagon.

The Washington Post’s army correspondent Dan Lamothe was amongst reporters shocked by Hegseth’s announcement.

“’The most transparent DoD in U.S. history,’ as [Hegesth] and his team calls itself, cracks down on media access again,” he wrote.

“I’ve been on this beat 17 years through numerous administrations,” he mentioned. “Never seen anything like this. One briefing all year. None again this week.”

Hegseth has not personally delivered a briefing in his first 100 days. Parnell has solely given one.

The secretary’s memo additionally states that “while the department remains committed to transparency, the department is equally obligated to protect [classified intelligence] and sensitive information, the unauthorized disclosure of which could put the lives of U.S. service members in danger.”

Hegseth continues to face intense scrutiny after sharing operational particulars about army strikes in a gaggle on the messaging app Signal, which inadvertently included a journalist.

The new measures introduced by Hegseth and his crew comply with ongoing efforts all through the Trump administration to scale back entry to adversarial reporters and promote “new media” — together with shops extra sympathetic to the president and his administration.

Shortly after Hegseth assumed the function of Defense Secretary, a number of main shops together with NBC and The New York Times had been evicted from their workspaces on the Pentagon as a part of a so-called “media rotation program.”

The press affiliation mentioned it was “puzzled” as to why the division was “devoting such attention to restricting Pentagon media instead of engaging with it as senior leaders have long done.”

“Transparency isn’t a threat. Independent reporting on national security isn’t a luxury. It’s democracy,” mentioned National Press Club president Mike Balsamo. “The Pentagon’s new media policy undermines transparency and the public’s right to know.”