Commentators have often asked that question — whether journalists, committed to presenting more than just one side of a story, could be loyal members of the “home team” amid a national crisis, especially a war. It came up in the days preceding the Persian Gulf War in 1991, when CNN correspondent Peter Arnett outraged some Americans by presenting the view from Baghdad; in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; in the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003; and in lesser national security incidents since then, such as publication of classified National Security Agency documents in 2013.
Hegseth’s comment was made in the aftermath of the U.S. military strike on Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani Friday, which prompted Iran to threaten retaliation and moved both nations closer to war.
The comment plays into a larger context, too. President Trump has repeatedly called into question reporters’ loyalties. The news media, he has said, are “the enemy of the people.”
Journalists have defended themselves for years by pointing out that there’s a bold line between loyalty to the country and fealty to the people who are running it. Skepticism of those in power is patriotic, too, as the veteran editor and author Bill Kovach wrote in the wake of 9/11.
“A journalist is never more true to democracy — is never more engaged as a citizen, is never more patriotic — than when aggressively doing the job of independently verifying the news of the day; questioning the actions of those in authority; disclosing information the public needs but others wish secret for self-interested purposes,” he wrote.
This may be especially true during wartime. Officials in the Nixon administration deemed the New York Times and The Washington Post unpatriotic for publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret government account of U.S. military involvement in Vietnam, though in hindsight the publication stands as a landmark of democratic action and journalistic truth-seeking.
The Pentagon and Trump administration spent three years seeking to bar The Post from publishing a similar trove of confidential documents and interviews with military and diplomatic officials about the war in Afghanistan. “The Afghanistan Papers” revealed the government’s doubts about the 18-year war, and exposed a campaign of official lies about its true progress.
Similar skepticism is warranted on the eve of another potential war, said Martin Baron, The Post’s executive editor.
“Most of the press wasn’t aggressive enough in questioning the premise for the Iraq War, when the Bush administration rationalized U.S. military action with false and misleading statements about that country’s development and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.
“The highest responsibility of the press is to report thoroughly, vigorously and probingly when this country’s leaders take actions that can put the lives of American troops and others at risk.”
But the probing often isn’t equally skeptical or vigorous, said Tim Graham, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog organization. He said American and Western journalists often are tougher on their own government officials than they are on those representing adversarial governments.
He argued that Western journalists frequently avoid asking tough follow-up questions or allow dubious claims to go unchallenged. He cited, for example, a CBS correspondent, Imtiaz Tyab, who reported in August that doctors at an Iranian hospital he visited said children there were dying of cancer as a result of American sanctions.
“If a journalist is more skeptical about what the American government is doing and just forwards what an Iranian spokesman tells them, people sense” unfairness, he said. “You have to be at least as tough on [Iranian officials] as on the Americans.” (However, some authorities suggest that the CBS report was accurate.)
Graham doesn’t go as far as Hegseth to suggest reporters are being unpatriotic, just that the same rules should apply equally.
But if skepticism equals disloyalty, Hegseth might have questioned his Fox colleagues Geraldo Rivera and Tucker Carlson, both of whom have raised doubts about the Trump administration’s actions in the wake of Soleimani’s death (Hegseth was unavailable for comment).
“Six months ago . . . this guy [Soleimani] was our friend,” Rivera said Friday on Fox. “We may not have loved him, but he was our ally in the fight against ISIS. Everyone, do we remember ISIS? It’s like ISIS never existed. ISIS had a caliphate. They were cutting people’s heads off. Wait a second, they were burning Americans! We know who ISIS is. Who helped us defeat ISIS? This same guy! Soleimani. He saved people.”
Carlson put it more pointedly on his show Friday: “Is Iran really the greatest threat we face?” he asked. “And who’s actually benefiting from this? And why are we continuing to ignore the decline of our own country in favor of jumping into another quagmire from which there is no obvious exit?”
Hegseth also might have questioned a fellow named Donald Trump, who has said he opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. “I disagreed with that decision from the beginning,” he told reporters in September, repeating a debunked claim. “I was outspoken about it. I thought it was a terrible mistake.”
Trump has made similar statements before. No one called him unpatriotic.