The Pentagon's 'black box'
This morning’s Pentagon press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine gave at least the appearance of transparency.
But the military leaders mostly received kid-glove treatment from the Trump-aligned media outlets that have been given front-row seats in the briefing room.
The first two outlets called on were One America News Network and The Daily Wire, both right-wing brands with little experience covering the US military.
The Pentagon briefing room is a stage, of course, and Hegseth used it to promote President Trump and chastise “fake news.”
While there were some new facts and figures provided at the briefing, mostly by Caine, Pentagon beat reporters tell me they’re struck by the lack of day-to-day details about the ongoing military operations. “Lots of chest-thumping, less concrete data” is how one reporter put it.
I checked in with six longtime US military reporters, knowing they’d only speak candidly on condition of anonymity.
“In ordinary war times,” one of the reporters said, “we would be getting briefings once or twice a day going into minute details about how the war was evolving.”
After all, there are countless questions that the military should be answering about a war being waged by American service members with American taxpayer dollars.
Instead, “these days, they put a random tweet or video out with details,” with no way for journalists to follow up, another Pentagon correspondent said.
For instance, Adm. Brad Cooper shared several valuable details — “we’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions” — in a web video last night.
But gone are the days of background briefings with military officials who could get into those specifics – and field follow up questions. “The Pentagon hasn’t allowed them to brief us yet,” the correspondent added.
Or perhaps the White House is the chokepoint. Pentagon beat reporters constantly follow up with Pentagon spokespeople via phone and email. But “virtually everything gets referred to the White House,” including operational questions, another reporter said. As a result, “most of what we gather is through leaks and Signal messaging, off the books.”
Through those efforts, the public is getting a more balanced picture, beyond the bravado of Hegseth’s statements.
But as another source said to me, when I relayed these observations from other reporters, the overall effect “of the lack of information is that the war has become something of a black box.”
And military reporters are well aware that Hegseth’s credibility is… limited.
Two different briefings in one |
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This morning, Hegseth made an incendiary, though unsurprising for him, charge: That the press prominently covers service member casualties to “make the president look bad.” Alluding to the Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six service members, he said, “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.” Caine, on the other hand, began his remarks by expressing “profound sadness and gratitude” for the deaths in Kuwait. As CNN’s John Berman said afterward, “there were almost two briefings going on,” one by Hegseth and the other by Caine. >> Retired Brig. Gen. Steve Anderson said on air that Hegseth came across as “a tough, macho guy talking about killing and shamelessly sucking up to the POTUS.” >> Hegseth’s aggressiveness made some wonder if he was trying to rebut MAGA-media war skepticism from the likes of Megyn Kelly. >> WaPo’s Dan Lamothe tweeted about the importance of covering military casualties, including, yes, on the front page: The press has “highlighted sacrifices by American service members and their families, and shortcomings that sometimes allowed those deaths to happen. We’ll continue to do so. It’s too important to stop.” |
Pentagon press corps tensions resurface |
This morning’s presser triggered another back-and-forth about who’s in the room, in the wake of last fall’s Pentagon press corps fight. “The briefing room was filled with his MAGA buddies,” CNN alum Jim Acosta wrote on X, yet Hegseth “still resorted to Fox MAGA talking points to bash the press.” The Daily Wire’s Mary Margaret Olohan responded, “There were reporters from all corners of the media in the room. But nice work on the sassy tweet!” Indeed, outlets like Reuters, CNN, ABC and The Atlantic were credentialed for today’s briefing, though I only heard Hegseth call on one “traditional” outlet: The BBC. He seemed to call on Tom Bateman because of the tie Bateman was wearing. Bateman asked for an update on “the reported strike on a girls’ school in southern Iran on Saturday,” and Hegseth tersely said, “We’re investigating.” |
Latest on the Iran ‘net blackout |
Iran “has now been offline for 100 hours,” NetBlocks said earlier today, noting that “the regime-imposed blackout is the second this year.” News outlets continue to obtain and verify videos and photos from inside Iran, however, and some eyewitness accounts continue to emerge. This morning The AP quoted a Tehran resident “who spoke on condition of anonymity for the fear of reprisals.” A Reliable reader wrote in about something I should have pointed out yesterday: That Al Jazeera “has been reporting from inside Iran and showing images from throughout the country.” Correspondents Mohamed Vall and Mazier Motamedi have been broadcasting live from Tehran. “The number of civilians killed is more than one thousand right now,” Vall said in a live shot just now. >> Additionally, the PBS “NewsHour,” France 24 and Drop Site News have featured Tehran dispatches from correspondent Reza Sayah. |
X says it will curb wartime AI fakes |
”X is drowning in disinformation” about the war, WIRED’s David Gilbert wrote the other day. Some of the bogus images “appear to be altered or generated with AI,” he wrote. “Other posts attempt to pass off video game footage as scenes from the conflict.” Now X says it’s taking action. “Starting now, users who post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict—without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI—will be suspended from Creator Revenue Sharing for 90 days,” the company’s head of product, Nikita Bier, said yesterday. Count me as skeptical about X’s newfound concern over misinformation, but hey, at least it says it’s trying. Per TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez, “X says it will identify the misleading posts through a combination of tools that are used to detect generative AI content, as well as through its crowdsourced fact-checking system, Community Notes.” >> BBC’s Shayan Sardarizadeh commented: “This war might have already broken the record for the highest number of AI-generated videos and images that have gone viral during a conflict. Interestingly, I said the exact same thing right after the 12-day war in June. Welcome to our brave new world of AI misinformation.” |
WSJ: Gayle King renews with CBS |
Gayle King has “signed a new deal with CBS News, according to people familiar with the matter, securing a high-profile network talent during a dramatic shake-up of the news organization,” the WSJ’s Isabella Simonetti and Joe Flint scooped just now. >> “Rumors of my demise were inaccurate and greatly exaggerated,” King said in a statement. (Remember, Variety caused a hullabaloo last fall with a story titled “Gayle King Expected to Depart as ‘CBS Mornings’ Anchor.”) King said, “CBS News is my longtime home, and I am committed to our mission. I’m excited about continuing at ‘CBS Mornings.’ As always, I’m open to new adventures here and ready to go…” |
Was it the ‘Colbert bump’? |
For James Talarico, the controversy over his Stephen Colbert appearance was “a big rocket,” Van Jones said on CNN last night as Talarico pulled ahead of Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary in the Texas Senate race. The race was called for Talarico overnight, leading The Hollywood Reporter to say “the ‘Colbert bump’ is still a thing.” During the earlier discussion, Scott Jennings remarked to Jones, “Let’s just admit it was an op, right? I mean, Trump had nothing to do with it.” Many conservatives have suggested that Colbert and Talarico cooked up the controversy to generate viral attention for the campaign. There’s no proof of that, but CBS’s “legal guidance” about the interview, owing to the FCC’s warning about “equal time” rule enforcement, was very real. |
Hannity offers his take on Paramount-Warner |
In a new interview on Katie Miller’s podcast, Sean Hannity was asked whether the Paramount-WBD merger is “a good thing.” Hannity said that’s “to be determined,” claiming “60 Minutes” under David Ellison and Bari Weiss is still “abusively biased as usual.” He then lashed out at CNN, arguing its hosts falsely claim to be journalists, and that they’re “full of shit.” In my favorite moment from the chat, Miller asked Hannity for examples of when he has disagreed with Trump. The Fox host admitted there have been moments when he has thought, “Did you have to say that? Did you really have to go there?” Specifically, Hannity said, “Maybe after Rob Reiner, you know, John McCain wasn’t too good either.” >> Elsewhere in the chat, Hannity said he has deliberately “stayed out of” MAGA media infighting, though when asked about Tucker Carlson, he felt he had to say something. Hannity said of Carlson, “I don’t ever talk to him ever. I mean, I wish him well. I’ve read a lot of what he says. I just completely disagree with it. And it’s not the person that I knew when he was at Fox.” |
>> Jonathan Tamari calls this “the Trump news cycle in effect: Kristi Noem on the Hill twice this week and already the two Minneapolis killings in Jan are pushed down the list of headlines because of new events.” (X) >> “Lawyers for Donald Trump and the BBC have jointly chosen a mediator who will try to resolve the claim brought by the president,” Joshua Rozenberg notes. The BBC is also trying to get the suit dismissed. (A Lawyer Writes) >> Netflix boss Ted Sarandos never met with “any White House officials last week when he visited Washington,” Sara Fischer reports. His meeting with Susie Wiles “was canceled because of a last-minute scheduling conflict.” But Sarandos did speak with Trump by phone after backing out of the bidding war with Paramount. (Axios) |
“With its mammoth deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Skydance is set to amass a ton of new debt and it faces a number of other financial risks. Now one of Wall Street’s big credit-rating agencies has downgraded Paramount’s debt to junk status and cut its issuer default rating,” Variety’s Todd Spangler reports. That agency, Fitch, warned that $PSKY’s leverage and free cash flow “may remain outside negative rating sensitivities longer than we anticipated.” |
Comcast president Mike Cavanagh said yesterday at the Morgan Stanley Investors Conference that Peacock will not be going global. “I don’t see a reason in our construct why we are disadvantaged by not pursuing global,” Cavanagh said, adding that while “others are doing it,” “in our case, domestic is our path.” THR’s Etan Vlessing has more on that here… >> As Semafor’s Rohan Goswami put it, “Comcast for years said scale, scale, scale. Now they’re just giving up on it altogether?” |
Meta and News Corp ink giant AI licensing deal |
Meta and News Corp have inked a $50 million-per-year, multi-year AI licensing deal that allows Meta “to use the media company’s content from the U.S. and the U.K.,” the WSJ’s Alexandra Bruell reports. The deal “will run for at least three years” and the dollar figure “reflects the increasing value technology companies are placing on the news content that has helped train their AI models.” >> Related? “Perplexity has accused Dow Jones and the New York Post of carrying out a fishing exercise and ‘entrapment’ by attempting to encourage its AI chatbot to spit out verbatim copies of its articles to back up their copyright claim,” Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobitt reports… |
>> “In public forums and in private conversations, OpenAI employees are venting about how OpenAI leadership handled the Pentagon negotiations,” CNN’s Hadas Gold reports, noting that “many employees ‘really respect’ Anthropic for standing up to the Pentagon and are frustrated with OpenAI’s handling of their own contract.” (CNN) >> Joseph Cox describes how US Customs and Border Protection “bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ precise movements over time.” (404 Media) >> X “is bringing its private messaging service, dubbed X Chat, to a standalone app.” (TechCrunch) >> Audible “is rolling out a cheaper ‘Standard’ subscription plan that costs $8.99 per month” amid “growing competition from Spotify.” (TechCrunch) >> Meanwhile, “Amazon is pulling the plug on the Wondery dedicated podcast app and Wondery+ subscription service.” (Variety) |
A ‘European media powerhouse’ |
Yesterday, TV/film production giants Banijay and All3Media announced a deal to merge, forming “a European media powerhouse,” Deadline’s Peter White wrote. Jeff Zucker, CEO of RedBird IMI, which owns All3Media, said “this is the world’s largest independent media content company by catalog, by hours, production, by any measure, with an enterprise value of $8 billion and equity value of $5 billion.” Marco Bassetti, Banijay’s CEO, said that while there will be some cuts, “there is no duplication in talent and creativity,” adding that “we want to keep all our talent.” |