Can Trump silence the press?

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0:30so you can monitor and engage with the account while your teen learns how to invest and manage money. Learn more at schwab.com. For the first time in decades, the press room at the Pentagon is now virtually empty. Since we've been on the air, dozens of news outlets covering the Defense Department have left the Pentagon after... This is video of dozens of reporters turning in access badges. They exited the Pentagon today, choosing not to agree to new government imposed restrictions on their work. Reporters cleaned out their workspaces in the building before a 4 p.m. deadline to either sign the policy or leave.

1:10Pentagon reporters have been in the building since Eisenhower. The colleagues who joined us today as we walked out included members of the conservative outlets and outlets that would be considered left-leaning. because everybody knows that you need all voices and you need all eyes on to provide transparency to the American public. Yeah, that was journalists from dozens of different outlets, including the BBC, who've refused to sign up to new rules that the Pentagon wants them to agree to, but they say would restrict their ability to do their reporting properly. So in this episode of AmeriCast, we're going to discuss all of that, but also ask what this tells us about the Trump administration's relationship with the media and whether or not they are trying to silence criticism.

1:55Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:26Hello, it is Marianna, a.k.a. Misinformation, in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London. Hi there, it is Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony right next to Sarah, also in Washington, D.C. Now, we've got a guest coming on today, which we're quite excited about. It's a top reporter from one of the news organisations who have refused to sign up to the new restrictions on reporting in the Pentagon, James Rosen from Newsmax, which is, Anthony, it's quite a conservative outlet, isn't it? Reasonably sympathetic to Donald Trump? It is. It's definitely friendly to Trump.

2:57Their reporters tend to be right-leaning. But it still is one that clearly, in this case, doesn't feel like these restrictions are something they can go along with. So before we hear from him, we better just lay out exactly what it is that's going on here and what the Trump administration is trying to do and why it's so incredibly unusual. They asked everybody who is accredited to go into the Pentagon, so people who've got a pass that means that they can go in and out of the Pentagon and probably have desks and seats there that they can use to work from. Everybody who had one of them had to sign up to a new policy which contains specific restrictions on how they could do their jobs.

3:38And the most egregious bit was it would bar journalists from reporting information that had not been officially authorized by the Department of Defense, something that basically gone out in an official press release. And so all these major outlets, ABC, CNN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Fox News and the BBC, of course, all said that they would not sign up to these restrictions. Only one organisation did agree to sign this new policy, which was One America News Network. We're a pretty conservative news channel, fairly supportive of Donald Trump. They agreed to this. But every other media outlet this week handed in their press passes and they all walked out together.

4:16and because they wouldn't sign up to this new policy. Let's take a little bit of a look at what some of this policy says. There's this section, for example, which is about what they call soliciting or encouraging government employees to break the law. So they basically say there's a distinction between lawfully requesting information from the government and then doing this thing of soliciting that from employees and encouraging them to break the law. And it says the First Amendment, so freedom of expression, does not permit journalists to solicit government employees to violate the law by providing confidential government information.

4:46The press's rights are not absolute, do not override the government's compelling interest in maintaining the confidentiality of sensitive information. The thing that's interesting here, though, is, and this is what a lot of people are asking, including journalists, what is the difference between solicitation or just saying what's going on inside the building, what's happening? Because obviously there are particular laws that can be broken, particularly when it comes to issues of defence, of national security. But also it is such common practice as a journalist to deal with whistleblowers, insiders.

5:18I mean, I deal with it in a different context, social media companies. But that is just that's part and parcel of our job, isn't it, Anthony Sarah? I mean, it's not it's kind of what we do all the time. Yeah, what the Pentagon and Hagseth wants this to be about is they don't want reporters to be walking the hallways and buttonholing military officials and getting them to reveal secrets or convincing them, browbeating them into revealing secrets. But what this policy goes on to say is that regardless of how you get that information, you're not supposed to report it. Whether you found someone in the hall to give you a document or talk to you about a document or you use other sources outside the Pentagon, they're still saying we want to have pre-approval for anything you publish and you can't publish any kind of classified information.

6:04And of course, publishing classified information is at the heart of what the American media does. You think back to some very notable examples, the Pentagon Papers, for example, in the 1960s, which was the Pentagon military documents about how the military was conducting the war in Vietnam during the 50s and 60s. Highly inflammatory, very controversial, but also very revelatory because it showed what the American military was doing in Vietnam and it helped turn the public against the Vietnam War. That, in theory, under these rules would be strictly forbidden. So I think that's what the conflict is here, what the disagreement is.

6:49But maybe we should hear directly from Trump and Pete Hegseth talking about why they instituted this policy. This was them in the White House explaining. I mean, I think I can speak for him. I'll let him speak for himself. But I think he finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace and maybe security for our nation. The press is very dishonest. Not you, but the press is very dishonest. Do you have something to say? Well, I very much appreciate the question because it was interesting to watch. We had a chance to go along on the historic trip of Middle East peace, which our generation of veterans never dreamed would be possible.

7:25So you would think that the Pentagon press corps of all press corps would be front and center across the board on wanting to give credit to the president for forging this kind of peace. and instead what they want to talk about is a policy about them, which simply says maybe the policy should look like the White House or other military installations where you have to wear a badge that identifies that you're press, or you can't just roam anywhere you want. It used to be, Mr. President, the press could go anywhere, pretty much anywhere in the Pentagon, the most classified area in the world. Or also that if they sign on to the credentialing, they're not going to try to get soldiers to break the law by giving classified information.

8:06So it's common sense stuff, Mr. President. We're trying to make sure national security is respected, and we're proud of the policy. You know, we have an option here. As you know, the press years ago moved into the White House. It used to be across the street. We could move them. You're lucky I'm president, because we could move them very easily across the street. They used to be there. They would have more room. We have a beautiful, nice space. You could sit all by yourselves and have fun. Instead, you walk around the White House talking to anybody that can breathe. And, you know, but I find that when it comes to war and now our great Department of War, we have some great people over there.

8:45I think it's sort of it bothers me to have soldiers and even, you know, high ranking generals walking around with you guys on their sleeve asking them because they can make a mistake and a mistake can be tragic. OK, so that was what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth had to say. But what about the other side? what journalists are saying. This is one of the reporters who handed in her press credentials. She's the Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Tara Kopp. And this is what she said to Fox News. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify and clean up a couple of misrepresentations that the Pentagon has made recently.

9:20We are all credentialed press. We've been there for decades. We go to war with these troops. We go, all of us have been all over the world with these service members. To even have a badge in the Pentagon, we all undergo just a very basic background check. It does not allow us any access to classified spaces. We have no more access to the building than, say, the people that work at the CVS or some of the food outlets that serve everybody who work in the Pentagon. And at its height, there's more than 26 ,000 people that go in and out of that building every single day. The benefit to the public for having us in the building on key days, on days like when we have struck Iran with our B-2 stealth bombers, or when 13 service members were killed in Afghanistan.

10:09We're in the hallways because we can be there to talk to people, to get a sense of things, to understand what the ground truth is, and not just get the one official narrative from an email or from a video posted to X or from a tweet. And that's an invaluable service to the public. Our ability to talk to multiple people, to build those relationships, to be in the hallways, to really get a sense for where we think the military is headed and what they're thinking is a great responsibility and one we take very seriously. That was a good explanation, I think, of some of the misconceptions that Donald Trump and Pete Hexas seem to have about these reporters being able to roam through classified spaces and access all sorts of information and things.

10:55And contrary to what Donald Trump was saying there, even though Anthony and I have White House passes, we're not allowed to roam all the corridors of the White House and talk to anyone who can breathe. And of course, I mean, we heard from they were put in their case, they want to make this sound as though journalists who've got Pentagon passes are kind of stealing classified information and putting it out there. When they're talking about not being allowed to report anything unless it's officially authorised, They're talking also about people's just impressions, for instance, nothing confidential or classified necessarily about saying hypothetically, none of the military top brass have got faiths in Peek Hickseth as the secretary of war.

11:32They don't think he's doing his job terribly well. It's the sort of thing that he doesn't want to see reported. And you would be barred from reporting under these rules. Yeah, I think what Kopp says there gets to the heart of this. The journalists want to get more than the official story. They would have talked to other people, including, as you mentioned, some people who may not like Pete Hegseth. There are a lot of people in the Pentagon who don't like Pete Hegseth that we've seen from reporting from a variety of different outlets. And the Pentagon and Hegseth want their official line to be the only line that is reported on that comes out of the Pentagon.

12:06So it's a leak control policy as much as it is some sort of concerns about national security. So, I mean, that is that's the heart of this. And I think when you when you get right down to it, Hegseth seems perfectly happy to get them out of there. It's not just the stories about Hegseth either. It's it's the whole administration was pretty ticked off when Pentagon reporters dug into the the after action reports on that B2 strike in Iran and had some military officials saying, well, it doesn't look like we did as much damage as we thought. They didn't want that out there either. And that is something that comes from reporting and having sources in the Pentagon who are not the official source.

12:46Because if he only went by the press release, if he only went by what Pete Hegseth said from the podium in the press room in the Pentagon, then you would think everything was just great and it was a total success, never been a better success. And that is not the story that reporters were hearing from other people. Yeah. And of course, the irony is that Pete Hegseth was working for Fox News before he got tapped up to be the defence secretary or war secretary, as he likes to call himself. And Fox News are among the people who've refused to sign up to this as well. So, yeah, they don't think they've got a different definition of press freedom than the war secretary has, clearly.

13:21And there have been a lot of leaks about Rouse within his office and things. So maybe it's not surprising that he wants to try and crack down on that. But some of the reporters who spent a lot of time in the Pentagon, seen many defence secretaries come and go, think they know why he's trying to restrict press access. Listen to Barbara Starr, who's also with the Pentagon Press Association, who has been for decades reporting from the Pentagon. Mr. Trump likes to talk to the media every day that he's in office. Hegseth almost never talks to the media. And I think behind the scenes, the big question that's being whispered about more and more is what is Hegseth afraid of?

14:04If he's afraid of leaks, go after those he believes are leaking. Peter Hegseth has made no, like it's being outlined there, has made no secret of some of the hostility he's felt towards the press and has been quite critical of the press more generally. I mean, I think back, though, to that really high profile story that we all chatted about when a journalist got added to that group chat. Do you remember? And Pete Hegseth was sharing confidential information on a signal chat that was about military operations against the Houthis in Yemen. And that was such a big deal. And that didn't come about from anyone being in any corridors or anywhere at all.

14:40It came about because somebody accidentally added this journalist to the chat. So I don't know, in some ways you wonder whether how far, and I don't know what either of you think, how far this goes in terms of actually, if this is something that is beneficial to Peter Hegseth, e.g. it stops there being briefings against him or that disagree with him. Like, does it, I don't know, will it ultimately have that effect or will journalists just still kind of be able to talk to sources in a different capacity and in a different way? Yeah, the Pentagon isn't a submarine. I mean, things leak out of there.

15:13As we heard from COP, there are 20 ,000 people who work in that building every day. And there are people who have agendas and have relationships with reporters who want to share that information. So I think that it is a futile effort to try to control this, whether you control it from having reporters inside the building or outside the building. And I think maybe some of this with Hegseth goes back to his confirmation hearings, which were highly contentious, where there were a lot of stories the press reported on and allegations of domestic abuse. And so he has a chip on his shoulder from that.

15:50Even going before then, he was kind of an outspoken advocate for soldiers who had been accused of war crimes. And it was reporting from journalists on the scene, defense reporters in places like Afghanistan, who got a lot of those stories about alleged abuses out. And so he's been at loggerheads, even though he was a Fox News host in the evening. He's been at loggerheads with the press and press coverage of the military for quite some time. Yeah, and it's clear when he does take questions that he doesn't have a lot of respect for people's right to ask those questions or to hear the answers. And he's got this very, very pugnacious style where he's sort of always kind of ratcheted up to 10 or 11, really, really angry about the fact that he's being asked about these things.

16:37You frequently see that. And there was one particularly famous exchange at a Pentagon press briefing earlier this year with the Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin. Griffin. And it was that story Anthony was just referring to there, the questioning exactly how much damage was done to Iran's nuclear facilities after a B-2 bombing strike on them by the US military. Do you have certainty that all the highly enriched uranium was inside the Fordow mountain or some of it because there were satellite photos that showed more than a dozen trucks there two days in advance? Are you certain none of that highly enriched uranium was moved?

17:12Of course, we're watching every single aspect. But Jennifer, you've been about the worst. The one who misrepresents the most intentionally. What the president says. I'm familiar. I was the first part about the ventilation shafts on Saturday night. And in fact, I was the first to describe the B-2 bombers, the refueling, the entire mission with great accuracy. So I take issue with that. I appreciate you acknowledging that this is the first the most successful mission based on operational security that this department has done since you've been here. And I appreciate that. I think it would probably be fair to say, whether it's Pete Hegseth or whether it's many of the kind of politicians who the team that Donald Trump surrounds himself with and Donald Trump himself have not exactly had a straightforward relationship with the press, certainly the whole of this presidency and last time around for Donald Trump as well.

18:06And I guess in terms of where this, where this particular Pentagon issue fits into the wider approach that Donald Trump is taking. I mean, I know we've all chatted about it quite a lot, but there is this quite stark issue of Donald Trump has spent a lot of time and the people around him, including Pete Hegseth, talking about the importance of freedom of expression, the importance that, you know, powerful people can be held to account. And that narrative worked quite well when they weren't in power. And then you've got these kinds of decisions being made, which seem to fly in the face of those principles.

18:38But but then again, it doesn't seem like that's being recognized by the administration. Yeah, it's kind of contradiction when you when you look at the very top and Donald Trump, he loves talking to the press. He's in front of the press all the time. The level of access that we as White House reporters get to Donald Trump is remarkable and nothing like any other White House that I have covered. And I think most reporters who are live today have covered. On the other hand, you see Donald Trump have a hostility towards the press and very thin skin towards critical press coverage. You heard him in that clip we played, him referencing moving the press across the street and out of the White House, which is something I think, despite the fact that we might get nicer digs, it's something that a lot of reporters object to because it would create a barrier, a separation between the press and the White House.

19:26that isn't there right now. But it goes beyond that. I mean, not just that threat, but also the way he talks about, say, the Associated Press, when the Associated Press wouldn't refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. They tried to lock them out of the Oval Office and keep them off of Air Force One and took it to court to fight it out with the Associated Press. And then cutting funding for things like Voice of America, the government-funded news reporting agency that presents American news to the rest of the world and cutting funding to PBS and National Public Radio, also organizations that sometimes critically cover the White House but have some funding from the federal government.

20:07And so you see this hostility here and it's steps that Donald Trump is taking, even though he's perfectly willing to talk to the press, he's also willing to pressure them and try to bully them into reporting the way he likes. And a lot of it's very transparent. I mean, they don't make a huge secret of this. There's always a tension with political reporting anywhere in the world between criticising the people that you're covering, but also speaking to and relying on as a source. And the more you criticise somebody in print or on television or on the radio, the less likely they are to grant you an interview in future or tell you something off the record in future.

20:45So you're always trying to balance that in your own mind, how you can continue to effectively do the job. Donald Trump's absolutely naked about it. I mean, quite often when he is taking all of these questions from people gathered around him in the Oval Office or anywhere, he'll take a question from someone and then realise what network they're from and say, no, actually, no, you can't ask a question. I don't like ABC. You're mean to me. You lie about me. I'm not speaking to ABC. You don't get a question. And take one from maybe a more sympathetic journalist standing in the room as well. So, you know, it's very upfront, at least the way he deals with this kind of thing.

21:19But changing the rules like this is making official the way in which they don't respect the fact that the press have a right to cover them this way and want to try and control it. Yeah, when I was in the Middle East with Trump on his trip there, Peter Alexander from NBC News tried to ask a question. He just shut it down. I don't even remember what the gripe he had against NBC News was at the time. But he says, you're fake news. I'm not going to answer your question. And now as ABC News, Trump in the White House, when Jonathan Karl, the White House correspondent for ABC News, been there forever, highly respected, tried to ask a question.

21:55Trump shut him down. And here he is. I mean, you can listen to how Trump does it, because this is routine practice for this president. Yeah, I just want to sell this free speech question, because you've said that you restored free speech in America. Is that free speech, including for people who are harshly critical of you, for your political opponents, for people who say things you don't like? I've become immune to it. Treat you unfairly? I've become immune to it. There's never been a person that's had more unfair publicity than me. And that's why your network paid me$15 million or$16 million, I believe, to be exact.

22:29George Slopadopoulos. And that's why CPS paid me a lot of money, too. And that's why I sued The New York Times two days ago for a lot of money. Because I well, I'm winning. I mean, I'm winning the cases and the reason I'm winning is because you're guilty, John You're guilty. ABC is a terrible network of very unfair network and you should be ashamed of yourself NBC is equally bad. I don't know who's worse. I think they're equally bad And you know for you to stand there and act so innocent and ask me a question like that. But look You paid a big price because you were dishonest, John And the reason I won that lawsuit was because you were dishonest.

23:07You were proven to be dishonest. And so you can't sit back and just say, oh, well, what do you think? You know, like you're some wonderful person. You're not a wonderful person. Frankly, you're a terrible reporter. You know it and so do I. OK. What I would say and that I think is quite interesting here is, you know, when and we've spoken quite a lot about the legal action that Donald Trump has decided to take against different media outlets. And there you can almost, I mean, we can never get inside Donald Trump's head, but you can kind of see its purpose, which is to be able to turn around and say, look, look, look, because I won this or they settled or because we struck up this deal.

23:41It's therefore proof that you were wrong and I was right. And I mean, a lot of people refer to these examples online, people who don't like Donald Trump very much, as examples of where they believe he is behaving much more akin to, say, an authoritarian regime than, you know, as a president of a democracy. What I would actually say, and maybe this is just because I inhabit my kind of social media bubble, but I do just think that a lot of this for me seems like the algorithmic effect on politics, which is you just are basically no longer able to. You're constantly kind of engulfed by and surrounded by people that agree with you and anything that you don't agree with is wrong.

24:20And that's just kind of how it feels like quite a lot of politicians in this administration operate to some degree. it's sort of like the filter bubbles on steroids. It's when you push stuff all the time that you agree with, that people agree with, that you think is right. And that's actually shaping how we deal with politics, which is why it becomes hard for either side to have a conversation with each other. One of the new things with the White House Press Corps is some of the new media outlets who have been given press passes and access and their questions are very often taken because their questions are things like how did this amazing president get to be so amazing and what more amazing things is he going to do over the next couple of months?

24:58And so that injects a whole new atmosphere into covering the press. But it doesn't stop other reporters asking the kind of difficult, tricky questions that the White House are more used to. Right. But it has changed the way the press pool in particular, which is a limited number of reporters who get into the Oval Office on the Air Force One and to smaller events for the White House, how it covers this president. and it does change the tenor of these gaggles with the president because the first few questions Trump tends to gravitate towards are ones that are friendly. And then, as we've seen, he will bristle and react hostily and shut down and not answer questions from the established reporters.