RIGHT SIDE
Reporters Lost Their Free Gym Membership At The Pentagon (They’re Mad Now)
Michael Duke
Recently, the Department of War’s rules regarding press assignments have become the center of controversy.
But, just as the legacy media always does, the story has been warped into a bigger fuss than the situation actually warrants.
Back in May, the Pentagon released a new “Memorandum For Resident And Visiting Press Assigned To The Pentagon.”
What that memorandum lays out is that it is designed to protect and reinforce operational security (OPSEC) and “classified national intelligence information” (CNSI) for accredited members of the press at the Pentagon.
In layman’s terms, the basis of the memorandum is that it is an effort to ensure that leaks out of the Pentagon are mitigated.
Completing a deeper dive into what the new memorandum details, the supposed restrictions the press now have vary from how the press and members of the media are no longer allowed into physical office spaces for the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Staff. Additionally, reporters and members of the media will have to be escorted within the building within specific areas and lose their access to the Pentagon Athletic Center.
On a base level, the media is telling you that reporters are being restricted, but then at the same rate, they’re failing to tell you that they’re upset because now they have to join Planet Fitness and pay for a membership.
You cannot blame Department of War (DOW) officials for wanting to mitigate leaks when we live in an age where cyber warfare, espionage, and information theft have a heightened capacity to cause damage to our way of life.
From leaks through discord which revealed to the public several bits of sensitive information relating to U.S. intelligence and intelligence about foreign nations, to the blatant fact that people with unprincipled and amoral motives like Julian Assange exist, our government should not give any leash to anyone when it comes to matters of national intelligence.
This includes free-range reporters.
The fact here is that the Pentagon is the Headquarters of the Department of War, the Department which provides “the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security,” as the DOW’s site puts it.
If we want to play games and be coy about national security at the headquarters of where it is most critical and should be held earnestly, we might as well just open up the doors and convert the Pentagon into a Whole Foods.
But, all of these facts are already known because it’s widely agreed and understood that the Pentagon cannot play games. However, people are only focusing on the fact that reporters are upset, and not the reason why they’re upset.
The conversation should be focused on why reporters were allowed to walk around the Pentagon like they own it in the first place. The conversation should be about what reporters might have been doing, which prompted the changes.
Any other discussion is just an engineered conversation of rehearsed and focus-group tested talking points designed to diss the Trump administration.
