NPR’s veteran Pentagon reporter warns new media coverage stifles journalism : NPR

In the present day, NPR will lose entry to the Pentagon as a result of we won’t signal an unprecedented Protection Division doc, which warns that journalists could lose their press credentials for “soliciting” even unclassified data from federal workers that has not been formally accepted for launch. That coverage prevents us from doing our job. Signing that doc would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding authorities officers accountable.
 
No respected information group signed the brand new rule — not mainstream retailers like NPR, the Washington Put up, CNN, and the New York Instances, nor the conservative Washington Instances or the right-wing Newsmax, run by a famous ally of President Trump. Some 100 resident Pentagon press will probably be barred from the constructing if they do not signal by the top of enterprise on Tuesday. 
 
I’ve held my Pentagon press move for 28 years. For many of that point, once I wasn’t abroad in fight zones embedding with troops, I walked the halls, speaking to and attending to know officers from everywhere in the globe, at instances visiting them of their workplaces.

Did I as a reporter solicit data? In fact. It is known as journalism: discovering out what’s actually happening behind the scenes and never accepting wholesale what any authorities or administration says.

I bear in mind how then-Protection Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was ecstatic after the autumn of Baghdad in 2003, insisting that it confirmed the success of the U.S. invasion. Not lengthy after, I bumped into an officer on the Pentagon who advised me, “No, Tom. It is not successful. Saddam Hussein’s supporters are attacking our provide traces. Now, we’ve to ship extra troops again to protect them.” That was as a result of the US, at Rumsfeld’s insistence, by no means despatched an sufficient variety of forces to Iraq to start with — a truth one other Military basic warned me about, unsolicited — and I reported on, earlier than the warfare even started.  
 
As a substitute of toeing the official line, that reporting helped folks perceive what U.S. troops had been actually going through. Removed from being successful, the autumn of Baghdad marked the start of an insurgency that stretched on for years.

(Protection Division officers, by the best way, have already restricted reporter actions within the Pentagon. They closed that exact hallway to reporters a number of months in the past.) 
 
In 2009, when the Obama administration introduced a “surge” of State Division workers to Afghanistan to assist the navy hold the peace in restive, far-flung provinces, one Marine officer advised me months later: “If there was a surge, we by no means noticed it.” And when the administration touted an Afghan “authorities in a field,” to deliver skilled Afghans to the provinces, it proved to be a failure. One basic advised me: “Subsequent time they let you know there is a authorities in a field, test the field.”
 
Once more, I reported each tales. That is my job. 
 
Over time, to have the ability to inform the general public and maintain the federal government to account for the wars being waged in Iraq and Afghanistan and the struggle in opposition to the Islamic State in Syria, NPR reporters, producers, photographers and I’ve spent plenty of time in fight zones.

We obtained to know troopers and Marines through the years whereas embedding with them, speaking with them and getting their perspective, which was usually far completely different from what we had been advised formally on the Pentagon. Generally officers on the Pentagon would declare progress or success. Out in dusty fight outposts or on patrols, we’d be taught the reality was way more sophisticated. I am nonetheless in contact with lots of these troopers and Marines we met way back. I am having a beer with certainly one of them the top of this week. They need the reality to get out, too. 
 
In June 2016, U.S. officers had been insisting that Afghan troops had been making progress in opposition to the Taliban. I used to be a part of a workforce of NPR reporters that embedded with Afghan forces to search out out if that official line was certainly true, making an attempt to get the bottom fact about what had develop into America’s longest warfare. We had been travelling in an Afghan convoy in western Afghanistan after we had been ambushed. I misplaced two buddies and NPR misplaced two courageous colleagues, photographer David Gilkey and translator Zabihullah Tammana, that day. Producer and colleague Monika Evstatieva and I had been in that convoy, took small arms fireplace, however had been unhurt. 
 
Once we flew by helicopter to deliver David and Zabi’s our bodies to a close-by American base, the U.S. basic there ordered an honor cordon, a tribute that’s often reserved for fallen troops, not civilians from the US and Afghanistan. Out of respect for 2 individuals who’d misplaced their lives of their line of responsibility, doing their jobs documenting the reality as journalists, U.S. troopers lined up within the darkness on both aspect as David and Zabi had been carried off the helicopter.  I fought onerous to not weep at one of the first rate, humane, and heartfelt gestures I’ve ever seen.

In NPR’s foyer, there is a memorial to David and Zabi, together with one of many cameras David was carrying that day, scorched and broken. 
 
So sure, we have acquired solicited and unsolicited data on all the pieces from failed insurance policies and botched navy operations that led to pointless navy and civilian deaths, to wasteful authorities tasks that each Democratic and Republicans administrations would quite keep within the shadows.  
 
That is our job. 
 
Now, we’re barely getting any data in any respect from the Pentagon. Within the 10 months that the Trump administration has been in workplace, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth has given simply two briefings.

And there have been nearly no background briefings, which had been frequent previously every time there was navy motion wherever on this planet, as there was with the latest bombings of Iran’s nuclear services and of boats off the coast of Venezuela alleged to be carrying illicit medication. In earlier administrations, Protection Division officers — together with the acerbic Rumsfeld — would maintain common press briefings, usually twice per week. They knew the American folks deserved to know what was happening.

 
Thomas Jefferson, no fan of the press himself, as soon as wrote that our liberty relies on the liberty of the press, “and that can’t be restricted with out being misplaced.” He knew a free and honest press is a necessary safeguard to a functioning democracy. 
 
So now, how will the American folks discover out what’s being carried out on the Pentagon of their title, with their hard-earned tax {dollars}, and extra importantly, the choices which will put their little kids in hurt’s approach? With no reporters in a position to ask questions, it appears the Pentagon management will proceed to depend on slick social media posts, rigorously orchestrated brief movies and interviews with partisan commentators and podcasters. 
 
Nobody ought to suppose that is adequate.