NPR’s veteran Pentagon reporter warns new media policy is stifling journalism: NPR

Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document that warns that journalists could lose their press credentials if they “solicit” even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for publication. This policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing this document would make us stenographers repeating press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable.
No reputable news organizations have signed on to the new rule – not mainstream media outlets like NPR, The Washington PostCNN and The New York Timesnor the curator Washington Times or the right-wing Newsmax, led by a recognized ally of President Trump. About 100 Pentagon resident journalists will be barred from the building if they do not sign by the end of business on Tuesday.
I have had my Pentagon press pass for 28 years. Most of the time, when I wasn’t overseas in combat zones where troops were located, I was roaming the halls, talking and getting to know officers from around the world, sometimes visiting them in their offices.

As a journalist, have I requested information? Of course. That’s what we call journalism: finding out what’s really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what a government or administration says.

I remember how elated then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, insisting that it showed the success of the American invasion. Shortly afterward, I ran into a Pentagon officer who said, “No, Tom. not a success. Saddam Hussein’s supporters are attacking our supply lines. Now we have to send more “That’s because the United States, at Rumsfeld’s insistence, never sent sufficient numbers of forces to Iraq – a fact that another Army general warned me about, without my prompting – and I spoke about it before the war even began.
Instead of toeing the official line, these reports helped people understand what American troops were really facing. Far from being a success, the fall of Baghdad marked the start of an insurgency that lasted for years.

(By the way, Defense Department officials have already restricted journalists’ travel to the Pentagon. They closed that corridor to journalists several months ago.)
In 2009, when the Obama administration announced a “surge” of State Department personnel in Afghanistan to help the military keep peace in remote and restive provinces, a Navy officer told me a few months later: “If there was a surge, we never saw it.” » And when the administration touted the merits of an “Afghan government in a box,” to bring experienced Afghans into the provinces, it proved a failure. A general told me, “The next time they tell you there’s a government in a box, check the box.” »
Again, I reported both stories. It’s my job.
Over the years, to inform the public and hold the government accountable for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, NPR reporters, producers, photographers and I have spent a lot of time in combat zones.

We got to know Soldiers and Marines over the years while being around them, talking with them, and getting their perspectives, which were often very different from what we were told officially at the Pentagon. Sometimes Pentagon officials declared progress or success. In dusty combat outposts or on patrol, we learned that the truth was much more complicated. I am still in touch with many of those Soldiers and Marines that we met long ago. I’m having a beer with one of them at the end of this week. They too want the truth to come out.
By June 2016, U.S. officials were insisting that Afghan troops were making progress against the Taliban. I was part of a team of NPR journalists who joined Afghan forces to find out whether that official line was indeed true, trying to get to the truth about what had become America’s longest war. We were traveling in an Afghan convoy in western Afghanistan when we were ambushed. I lost two friends and NPR lost two courageous colleagues, photographer David Gilkey and translator Zabihullah Tamanna, that day. Producer and colleague Monika Evstatieva and I were in this convoy and came under small arms fire, but remained unharmed.
When we flew by helicopter to bring the bodies of David and Zabi to a nearby U.S. base, the U.S. general ordered a cordon of honor, a tribute that is usually reserved for fallen soldiers, not civilians from the United States and Afghanistan. Out of respect for two people who had lost their lives in the line of duty as journalists, documenting the truth, American soldiers lined up in the darkness on either side as David and Zabi were carried from the helicopter. I fought hard not to cry at one of the most decent, humane and sincere gestures I have ever seen.

In the NPR lobby, there is a memorial to David and Zabi, including one of the cameras David was carrying that day, burned and damaged.
So yes, we have received solicited and unsolicited information on everything from failed policies and botched military operations that have resulted in unnecessary military and civilian deaths, to unnecessary government projects that Democratic and Republican administrations would prefer to remain in the shadows.
It’s our job.
Today, we barely receive any information from the Pentagon. In the 10 months that the Trump administration has been in office, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given only two briefings.

And there were virtually no briefings, which has been common in the past whenever there was military action anywhere in the world, as was the case with the recent bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities and of boats off the coast of Venezuela carrying illicit drugs. In previous administrations, Defense Department officials — including the acerbic Rumsfeld — held regular press briefings, often twice a week. They knew the American people deserved to know what was going on.

Thomas Jefferson, no fan of the press himself, once wrote that our freedom depends on the freedom of the press, “and that it cannot be limited without losing it.” He knew that a free and fair press is an essential guarantee of the proper functioning of a democracy.
So now, how will the American people find out what is being done at the Pentagon in their name, with their hard-earned tax dollars, and, more importantly, the decisions that could put their sons and daughters in danger? In the absence of journalists capable of asking questions, it appears Pentagon leaders will continue to rely on slick social media posts, carefully orchestrated short videos, and interviews with partisan commentators and podcasters.
No one should think this is enough.