On the latest edition of the public radio program “On the Media,” co-host Micah Loewinger engages in a wonderfully contentious interview with right-wing influencer Cam Higby, a newly minted member of the Pentagon press corps. Higby is among a gaggle of MAGA promoters who’ve moved in after actual reporters walked out rather than sign Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s directive that they agree not to report any unauthorized news.
I want to call your attention to one particularly huffy exchange in which Higby claimed that he initially believed the Pentagon was demanding pre-publication approval of stories because he had supposedly made the mistake of believing a false report on CNN:
Higby: CNN said very blatantly the other night on air that every member of the new Pentagon press corps is required to have their stories approved by the Pentagon, which the agreement actually explicitly says the opposite. Right? They are lying just like they always have. They’re gripping on for dear life as their boat sinks.
Loewinger: You posted on X that unethical conditions are that I can’t publish information that’s classified CUI [controlled unclassified information, a lower level of government secrecy] or in national security interest without permission.
Higby: Yeah. So I had been under a misunderstanding. Actually, I was like brainwashed by the story that the mainstream media was publishing after — I don’t even remember if this was before or after, my first day in the Pentagon, which was just really basic orientation stuff. And then I went to somebody at the Pentagon, and I was explicitly informed this applies only to DOW [Department of War] employees and not to members of the press corps.
Loewinger: So you are a Pentagon correspondent, and you signed an agreement with the Pentagon, and you thought that you were not allowed to publish classified information?
Higby: Have you ever been gaslit like so when you read that it explicitly says that you don’t have to seek approval for anything? And then there’s a whole mainstream media firestorm where everyone is telling you that you’re not allowed to do this, and you haven’t had an opportunity, because you haven’t been in the Pentagon yet to ask people at the Pentagon, and you’re trying to defend yourself being gaslit by the entire multibillion-dollar mainstream media empire. I think it’s fair to to allow a little bit of grace there, don’t you think?
Loewinger: It sounds to me like you didn’t read this thing very closely.
Loewinger did a fine job of parrying with Higby, but he did let Higby’s claim that CNN had falsely reported on what’s in the policy slide by without challenging him. I tagged Loewinger on Bluesky over the weekend to ask about that, but I didn’t hear back.
Great @micahloewinger.bsky.social interview with right-wing influencer Cam Higby. Two questions for Micah. Higby claimed CNN falsely reported the new Pentagon policy requires pre-publication approval of stories. Was Higby right? And if he was, did CNN get it wrong, or was that account accurate?
I also tried to find out whether CNN had reported any such thing. I couldn’t come up with a definitive answer because if someone had made that false assertion in passing during one of the outlet’s talk shows, it probably wouldn’t pop up in a Google search. But actual news stories at CNN.com make no such claim.
For instance, CNN media reporter Brian Stelter wrote on Sept. 22, right after the new policy was unveiled, “Now, according to the new policy, beat reporters with a Pentagon credential will have to sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material.” Seth Stern of the Freedom of Press Foundation told Stelter that amounted to prior restraint, but that’s not the same as pre-publication review, which would constitute another level of censorship.
By the way, The New York Times sued the Defense Department last week over the new policy. NPR media reporter David Folkenflik quotes from the Times’ brief: “It is exactly the type of speech and press-restrictive scheme that the Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have recognized violates the First Amendment. The Policy abandons scrutiny by independent news organizations for the public’s benefit.“
Beyond the second strike
The New York Times has published an excellent corrective to the notion that what really matters in the scandal over the seemingly indiscriminate killings off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia is whether Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a second strike in one of those incidents.
The Washington Post reported recently that, in September, Hegseth ordered that everyone on board a ship that he claimed was being used by drug runners be killed. After two of the 11 crew members survived and were seen clinging to the wreckage, Adm. Frank Bradley ordered that they be taken out with a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s directive. Now the Times’ Charlie Savage and Julian E. Barnes write:
The larger question now is whether the belated bipartisan interest in that particular strike will generate momentum for a broader look at the entire killing spree that Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth have led the U.S. military to perform, said Rebecca Ingber, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law and a former State Department expert in the law of war.
“There is a risk that the focus on the second strike and specifically the talk of ‘war crimes’ feeds into the administration’s false wartime framing and veils the fact that the entire boat-strikes campaign is murder, full stop,” she said.
As of today, nearly 90 people have been killed. Bradley, Hegseth and Donald Trump are all complicit. As Ingber notes, there is no armed conflict; this is simply murder on the high seas. You can’t help but think of the old saw that dead men tell no tales. By killing everyone, the Trump regime has forestalled the possibility that any crew members will pop up at an embarrassing news conference.
Let’s not forget that Bradley’s predecessor, Adm. Alvin Holsey, took early retirement after clashing with Hegseth over the legality of the strikes, as The Wall Street Journal has reported. It seems possible that Bradley will be held to account, and perhaps Hegseth, too. Will Trump?
Faneuil Hall outrage
The Trump regime last Thursday halted a naturalization service for immigrants that was under way at Faneuil Hall — “known as the country’s cradle of liberty,” as Sara Betancourt reports for GBH News. Here is a nauseating detail:
“One of our clients said that she had gone to her oath ceremony because she hadn’t received the cancellation notice in time,” said Gail Breslow, executive director of Project Citizenship. “She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.”
Betancount continues, “That client, a Haitian woman in her 50s, has had a green card since the early 2000s and started working with Project Citizenship in January.”
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