‘Mouthpieces for Trump’: inside the rightwing takeover of the Pentagon press corps

Being a member of the Pentagon press corps was once one of the more prestigious assignments in US journalism, a position reserved for heavy hitters from venerable newspapers and news channels, reporters at the peak of their powers.

Not any more. A press conference last week – held at a crucial time for a Pentagon embroiled in scandal – was instead attended by more than a dozen rightwing activists, with the government being held to account by a close ally of Donald Trump, an employee at Turning Point USA and someone from a pillow salesman’s nascent media company.

Almost all credentialed reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their Pentagon press passes in October, rather than sign a 21-page Pentagon document that set restrictions on journalistic activities.

Those constraints include requiring news organizations to pledge they will not obtain unauthorized material – in effect limiting journalists to reporting on officially provided information – and agreeing to limits on journalists entering certain parts of the Pentagon.

Following that walkout, the Pentagon issued passes and access to dozens of rightwing media figures and organizations who agreed to the strict rules, including Laura Loomer, a Trump confidante who has described herself as a “proud Islamophobe”; LindellTV, an online streaming channel founded by Mike Lindell, a conspiracy theorist and CEO of MyPillow; and Matt Gaetz, a disgraced former congressman turned host at One America News Network.

The lack of serious media figures scrutinizing the Pentagon – last year Loomer filmed herself eating dog food for an advert, while LindellTV appears to exist primarily to push Lindell’s disproven claims of election fraud – comes at a time when there is a particular need for journalists to provide proper scrutiny of a Pentagon beset by controversy.

On Thursday, an independent report published by the Pentagon’s office of inspector general found that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed US mission objectives and potential harm to US pilots” when he used the chat app Signal to discuss details of an operation in Yemen. A journalist from the Atlantic was included in the Signal group chat where Hegseth shared the information – the debacle led to calls for Hegseth’s resignation. Separately, the Pentagon continues to face questions over the double strike conducted on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean.

The new press corps seems ill-positioned to ask those questions, or to hold the government to account. Loomer and Gaetz are hyper-partisan rightwing commentators and avid supporters of the Trump administration; LindellTV and other organizations which signed the agreement, like Turning Point USA, the Daily Signal, the Gateway Pundit and the Post Millennial, are self-professed conservative outlets.

“It’s incredibly problematic. We’re talking about severely limited access to the already secretive military-industrial complex,” said Carole-Anne Morris, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

“I have a hard time assigning any credibility whatsoever to any media outlet or journalist who would agree to the terms of the Pentagon’s new press policy. Essentially, these folks will only be able to parrot information they’re spoon-fed by some media liaison in the Pentagon. They can’t seek out information on their own. Doesn’t sound like journalism to me. Here’s what it actually is: a group of alt-right outlets who are vying to be mouthpieces and apologists for this administration.”

The New York Times sued the Pentagon and Hegseth on Thursday, alleging that the ban “seeks to restrict journalists’ ability to do what journalists have always done – ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements”, and experts have warned that the government is violating the first amendment right to free speech.

“Everything about the press and the way it works requires independence from the government, so anything that restricts what you can say, what you can do, anything that’s about how you do your job is just unacceptable,” said Gregg Leslie, executive ​director​ of the First Amendment Clinic,​ at Arizona State University’s ​Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

“It’s just a fundamental violation of the first amendment. I mean, you can make the argument that nobody has the right to get into the Pentagon, and the same is true of the White House, but once they start making decisions that discriminate against you based on how you’re going to cover something or what your viewpoint is, that’s going to become completely unacceptable.”

As criticism continued this week, the Pentagon issued its own, school newspaper-style report on Wednesday, chirpily hailing a “whirlwind of activity” for its staff, who it said had completed three days of “onboarding” for the new press corps. That new makeup consists of more than 70 independent journalists, bloggers and “social media influencers”, the report said.

“This ‘new media’ operates differently than traditional media, and Pentagon leadership believes it is better equipped to inform a broader swath of the American public about what goes on inside the department,” Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said in the release.

Of the new, almost exclusively rightwing press corps, Wilson said: “We want to make sure that we’re reaching as many Americans as possible.”