Defense reporters invited by Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell for an off-the-record meet-and-greet on Thursday broke ground rules and selectively leaked snippets from the meeting to columnist Oliver Darcy, who published their accounts the next day in his newsletter.
Despite the meeting being off-the-record, Darcy cited “first-hand accounts” from reporters who were in the room and “requested anonymity to relay the events that transpired because they are not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.”
Darcy wrote that the meeting started amicably, with Parnell indicating he wanted to have a good relationship with journalists. However, Darcy wrote, “the meeting quickly went off the rails when reporters in the room were given the opportunity to ask questions.”
He then described reporters’ accounts that painted Parnell in an unflattering light.
According to Darcy, Parnell asked the journalists whether they were “rooting” for President Donald Trump to succeed, which upset reporters.
As Darcy wrote, “A reporter answered that it was not their job to root for or against a subject that they cover, but to simply report the facts.”
Darcy noted that some reporters “grew emotional” and that one asked Parnell if he had ever read their reporting.
He wrote that Parnell responded “in a snarky manner” that he had read their reporting, and claimed that he did so in a way that suggested “it revealed something terrible about who they are.”
The report then said the meeting hit a “crescendo” after Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot “assailed the assembled journalists for the media’s past coverage of then-candidate Trump ‘even after he was shot in the ear and got up.’”
It said Ullyot accused the press of “ignoring” Joe Biden having “to use the kiddie steps to get up Air Force One and lectured the reporters over why their outlets were ‘failing’ with audiences.”
Despite the reporters breaking the rules of their off-the-record meeting with Parnell, they complained to Darcy that he was making it “difficult — if not impossible — with his hostile approach.”
Darcy wrote:
It was a preview of how the Pentagon, under Hegseth and Parnell, plans to engage with the press—or, more accurately, disengage. Just as Trump uses the White House podium to smear journalists while elevating loyalists from outlets like OAN and Newsmax, the Pentagon is now making its own moves. Hegseth and Parnell are working off the same playbook: attacking credible reporters as ‘biased’ and replacing them with friendly propagandists who won’t challenge their narrative.
He then claimed — despite regular video updates and statements from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his press team, as well as Hegseth bringing Axios along with several conservative news outlets on his first international trip — that the Pentagon is “freezing out journalists.”
“If the only coverage of military operations and decisions comes from those who have been pre-approved to tell the ‘right’ version of events, then the public is no longer being informed. It’s being deceived,” Darcy claimed.
The Trump Pentagon recently forced the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, CNN, NPR, and other legacy and left-leaning outlets to give up their long-held workspaces inside the Pentagon — loaned to them by the Department — to new and conservative media outlets who reflect what Americans are reading and watching today, including Breitbart News, Newsmax, OANN, and Huffington Post.
The legacy news outlets are still able to report from inside the Pentagon and have not lost access to the building, unlike when the Biden administration revoked the permanent White House press passes of more than 400 journalists.
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