Dozens of major news organizations have refused to sign President Donald Trump’s restrictive Pentagon press policies, leading veteran journalists to turn in their press badges, a move MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow called “incredibly inspiring.”
Journalists from New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, the Atlantic, the Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR, PBS and Newsmax all objected to the guidelines, which would have restricted the newsgathering on the Department of Defense.
“This is Chapter 1, shutting out the free press, shutting out access to the truth about the military,” MSNBC’s “Deadline White House” anchor Nicolle Wallace said Wednesday.
“This is also a really important chapter in what it means to stand up to authoritarianism,” Maddow added.
Maddow commended the American people for being brave and standing up against the president across the country, but she pointed out that this instance was one of the first in which institutions have not capitulated to the president for fear of retaliation.
“The cowardice that we have seen has been from institutions and that includes media organizations and news organizations,” she said. “We’ve seen executives make cowardly and craven decisions to try to appease Trump or please him in some way in hopes that maybe that earns you another day.”
She continued: “In this case we’ve got all of those Pentagon reporters with their news organizations behind them standing up and saying no.”
The MSNBC anchor said she does not know how the reporting process will look like outside of the Pentagon building, but she is confident that the alternative is better than writing only what the Trump administration approves of, “working here as your lackeys not as journalists.”
“I find this to be incredibly inspiring,” Maddow said. “When journalists and the news organizations that employ them stand up like this, particularly ones on the right, it is a good sign.”
Wallace asked Maddow if she thought journalists were taking this step of confidence because of the subject matter they cover or because of the prestige of the Pentagon press corps, but Maddow thought it was neither.
“I think it might be happening because news organizations have realized it’s really embarrassing to cave to Trump,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t think any self-respecting news organization knew that they could accept these sort of rules and leave their reporters in there under these Orwellian rules. I think the weather is changing.”
Watch the full exchange here:
