The government of US President Donald Trump, to an unprecedented measure, announced last Friday (31) that he will remove four press organizations, including the New York Times, from his pentagon offices, claiming to open the desire to open space for others.
Memorandum on a “new annual media rotation program” also reported that it will remove the National Public Radio (NPR, Washington -based American public radio), NBC News, owned by Comcast, and the political site, which should vacate your seats until February 14. Instead, work spaces will be granted for New York Post, One America New Wortwork, Breitbart Newwork and HuffPost News.
From now on, each year, a printed, online, television and radio communication means will come out of the Pentagon “to give way to a new means of communication from the same media that has not had the unique opportunity to report as a resident member of the body Pentagon’s press, ”says the memo.
“We are disappointed by the decision to deny ourselves access to a pentagon transmission booth we have used for many decades,” said a NBC News spokesman.
“Despite the significant obstacles this represents for our ability to collect and report news of national public interest, we will continue to report with the same integrity and rigor that NBC News has always done.”
NPR expressed concern about the decision and asked the Defense Department to expand the corporate space available for all press vehicles that cover the Pentagon have the same access.
“This decision interferes with the capacity of millions of Americans to directly hear the Pentagon’s leadership and NPR’s public interest mission to serve Americans who resort to our local public media stations in all 50 states.” , he said.
O and Politic did not respond to requests for comments made outside of business hours at first.
More than twenty news organizations operate from the Pentagon, including Reuters, informing about the daily activities of the US Armed Forces.
“To be clear, the communication vehicles that vacate the spaces borrowed by the secretary (defense) will continue to be full members of the Pentagon press,” said Joh Ulyot, interim assistant of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.
“The only change will be to give up their physical spaces in the building to allow new vehicles to have their resident members of the Pentagon press.”
The Pentagon Press Association, which represents journalists covering the Defense Department, said it is “very concerned about this unprecedented measure … to exclude the highly professional press.”
Reuters correspondent Phil Stewart is part of the board with four members of the association.
