For the primary time in additional than 60 years, CBS News will shut out the week with out a workspace within the Pentagon after declining — together with practically each main information group — to signal onto new press necessities that reporters’ associations say may infringe on their First Modification rights.
CBS News had radio correspondents within the constructing for the reason that Forties and a TV community sales space, or mini-office, in an space designated for media for the reason that Seventies. Over the previous twenty years, because the networks have been in a position to go dwell from the constructing, “on-air” lights flash on when main information breaks, and journalists relay data to the general public dwell from the Pentagon.
For many of that point, CBS News chief nationwide safety correspondent David Martin was the one breaking the information and reporting out each story. The Pentagon gave him his first press badge in 1983, his longtime producer Mary Walsh 10 years later. Since then, the duo has not solely lined each army battle, but additionally instructed tales in regards to the army’s service members and their lives.
“I am happy with the work David Martin and I’ve carried out, telling tales of valor on the battlefield and braveness and resilience at Walter Reed,” Walsh wrote in an e mail earlier than handing over her Pentagon press credential this week. “I’ve been impressed and humbled by the fortitude of those women and men, their willingness to sacrifice the whole lot for our nation.”
A lot of these tales emerged from relationships constructed due to CBS News’ fixed presence contained in the Pentagon.
“Strolling the halls of the Pentagon was my M.O. for 40 years. I do not know the way else to cowl a narrative besides by being there,” Martin wrote in an e mail. “I might guess that 90 per cent of the tales I broke had been a results of being within the hallways and visiting officers of their workplaces.”
“Not each official was glad to see me however coping with them head to head, day in and time out, developed a degree of belief on each side. Typically relationships acquired tense however by no means acrimonious,” Martin wrote. “Even when [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs] Colin Powell was yelling at me to get the hell out of his approach, I knew I may return and speak to him the following day.”
Martin’s first day on the job as CBS News Pentagon correspondent was April 18, 1983, the day a beforehand unknown terrorist group referred to as Hezbollah blew up the American embassy in Beirut.
“No one knew it on the time, however that was the beginning of the age of terror,” Martin mentioned.
“The subsequent 40 years included the invasion of Grenada, Panama, the First Gulf Battle, the air battle towards Serbia, 9/11, the invasion of first Afghanistan after which Iraq, the Bin Laden raid and the withdrawal from Afghanistan — to not point out all of the cultural points, like ladies in fight. I can’t think about overlaying any of these tales with out a constructing move,” Martin wrote.
Bob Schieffer, the moderator of “Face the Nation” from 1991-2015, spent a few of his first years at CBS News sporting a Pentagon move.
“I got here to work for CBS in 1969, and it was shortly after that, they only despatched me out to the Pentagon as a result of I used to be the rookie,” Schieffer mentioned in a cellphone interview.
Schieffer was there for about six years and “liked it.”
“I will inform you what I liked about it — it was like overlaying a small city in the course of an enormous metropolis,” Schieffer mentioned. “You can get data, and , more often than not, it was data that not solely helped you, it helped the general public perceive.”
“They spend some huge cash on the Pentagon and rightly so, however I feel individuals have a proper to find out about it, and never simply get one public relations one that’s going to place out a press launch.”
At the moment, Charlie D’Agata is CBS News’ senior nationwide safety correspondent overlaying the Pentagon and brings over twenty years of expertise overlaying the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, in addition to the U.S. army involvement in battle zones from Iraq and Afghanistan to Syria.
But it surely’s not simply the correspondents on digicam who’re giving up their passes.
CBS News radio correspondent Cami McCormick has lined nationwide safety at CBS for over twenty years. And groups of producers, digicam operators, audio technicians and engineers essential to bringing tales of the army to People throughout the nation will even be turning of their passes.
The Pentagon says the intent of its new coverage is to cease press leaks and train management over tales in regards to the army reported by CBS News and different media organizations. It despatched journalists a memo in September mandating they signal an settlement acknowledging they would want formal authorization to publish both labeled or managed unclassified data.
The division mentioned within the memo that “data should be authorised earlier than public launch … even whether it is unclassified.” News organizations got a deadline of 5 p.m. this previous Tuesday to return the signed settlement. The overwhelming majority declined to take action, although at the very least one outlet, the far-right One America News Community, agreed to the brand new restrictions.
CBS News Pentagon journalists might have turned of their credentials this week, however shedding entry to the constructing is not going to cease them from reporting what is going on on in what Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth as soon as promised can be “probably the most clear administration ever.”
CBS News tales from the Pentagon over time:
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