American media says no to new Pentagon rules

The US Defence Department has issued a new set of rules about covering the department, also known as the Pentagon because the building in which it is housed is five-cornered. One of the new rules says that credentialled reporters at the Pentagon should not seek classified information from the employees at the department and some of the unclassified information too.

The department asked the journalists covering the Pentagon to sign their consent to the new rules. The entire American media refused to sign. And this refusal was not confined to liberal media like The New York Times and The Washington Post. It included the conservative The Wall Street Journal and even the right-wing Fox News. The only news outlet that had signed its consent was the One America News (OAN) portal.

The concern expressed by journalists was that the government can prosecute a reporter under the Espionage Act for violating the new rule. The media asserted its right to report what is happening in the US military accurately, and information cannot be withheld. Pentagon’s chief spokesman Sean Parnell said, “The policy does not ask for them to agree, just to acknowledge that they understand what the new policy is. This has caused reporters to have a full-blown meltdown, crying victim online. We stand by our policy because it’s what is best for our troops and the national security of this country.” The five major broadcast networks in a joint statement said, “Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed on important national security issues. The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the US military as each of our organisations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

The new policy takes an unyielding position too. It says, “The press’ rights are not absolute and do not override the government’s compelling interest in maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information.”

The confrontation between the American media and the Trump Administration is likely to continue. It is not surprising that President Donald Trump’s aides would want to assert their powers forgetting that the American system is based on the principle of checks and balances. No wing of the government, whether it is the executive, legislature or the judiciary has the right to exercise unchecked powers.

It is a well-established fact that governments invoke national security to hide facts, but the real motive is to hide failings of the government. The media has no choice but to take the risk of official wrath to bring to light what is being hidden in the name of security. If the media were to challenge the new policy in the courts, the Supreme Court, with its overwhelming conservative majority of six justices to the three liberal judges, is likely to rule in favour of the government.

Trump has been unapologetic in his intention to undo all the democratic freedoms which the American media had wrested from the Republican presidents, legislature. For a long time, the Supreme Court, including its Republican-nominated conservative judges, upheld the principles of free speech, which includes access to government information. But now the highest court in the oldest democracy is dyed-in-the-wool conservative. There is no trace of liberalism. The glimmer of hope provide by Trump-nominated Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett seems to dying out. Justice Barrett has been steadily holding on to uncompromising conservative positions. That leaves the media at the mercy of an arbitrary government which can harry an independent media when it wants to.