All three are pretty right wing publications refusing to sign Hegseth’s letter demanding agency pre-clearance of all DOD related articles in order to have full press access.
Ope, Newsmax is ruined for Dayton. He's rolling out on his motorized wheelchair to go burn down the back-issue library in his chicken coop.
No props to the Atlantic. Easy for them to turn down press access when their reporters are already in the Signal group chat.
When I saw that list earlier I thought about the dilemma it presents to Faux News. Stand up and act like actual journalists for once, or kowtow to their former coworker, Kegstand?
I haven’t been able to find out if they signed it or not. You probably have better media connections than me though.
Per Newsweek, Fox News has rejected the demand. https://www.newsweek.com/pete-hegseth-pentagon-press-access-fox-news-10878748
I just came here to post that. News organizations, including Hegseth’s former employer Fox, reject new Pentagon reporting rules Well I'll be damned.
"Hey baba, I'll trade you this one poorly photocopied printout of a picture of a mirror universe Kira in exchange for your press credentials"
What Hegseth appears to have forgotten is that for "you'll lose access if you don't do what I say" to be a threat, access has to be worth something. Using local news as an analogy, local reporters and photographers have a strong motive to not go particularly hard on the police, especially the leadership. When the relationship is good, an on-site commander can choose to let you get closer to the scene, a chief can choose to give you his or her cell phone number, and a PIO can respond to your emails instantly. (In the past, it was far from unheard-of for a photographer to get a tip from a mid-ranking officer like "hey, you might want to listen to your scanner around 5 a.m. tomorrow," but I don't know if that's still true. When the relationship is bad ... well, there's no law that says the chief or the PIO can't let your email sit in their inbox for two or three days before responding. In this case, news organizations are probably tumbling to the fact that the only thing "access" will get them is the exact same lies that Hegseth and his nepotism hires will be posting to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. (I will call it "X" when Elon calls his daughter Vivian.)
The new in-house Pentagon press corps: The Federalist, the Epoch Times, OAN, Turkish newspaper Akşam, three individuals from the Turkish state-run Anadolu Agency, two Turkish freelancers, a reporter for the Australian, an Afghan freelancer; and three lesser-known operations, AWPS News, the India Globe and a blog called USA Journal Korea. https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...pentagon-only-15-signed-its-new-press-policy/ The Australian is Murdochs biggest newspaper down here. They have since taken back their agreement to the rules after realizing they'd fucked up, which is just causing even more people to call them out for being cowardly shits because they were happy to suck up until they realized so many others weren't.
