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All Things N ebraska
There’s an old saying about government – “what is said isn’t so, it’s what is so isn’t said.”
So that means that someone – maybe a state auditor, maybe a whistleblower, but often a news reporter – needs to dig in and find out what is really happening with our tax dollars.
That’s why it was so disgusting to read recently about our “Secretary of War’s” crackdown on access by reporters to the Pentagon. Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend host, is the U.S. Secretary of Defense. And it’s his opinion that reporting by a free press – a right guaranteed in the Bill of Rights – is somehow disruptive to his job. (President Trump wants to change the title to Secretary of War for some reason, but he can’t do it without an act of Congress, so I’m sticking with the legal title.)
So Hegseth wants reporters to sign what amounts to a loyalty oath, pledging that they will refrain from reporting about things his agency – one of the largest and biggest spenders in federal government – has not authorized to be revealed.
Reporters have long self-restrained from reporting on troop movements and ongoing military exercises that would endanger soldiers. But give me a break, has anyone ever heard about the Pentagon Papers?
That 1967 document, long held in secret by the Pentagon, revealed that our country’s military leaders and presidents had concluded for years that a war in Vietnam was unwinnable. Yet our leaders kept sending troops, spending money and telling us we could win until a costly war, in terms of lives and expenditures, ended in 1975.
That was a document that the Pentagon did not authorize for release. It took a whistleblower and reporters and editors with the New York Times in 1971 to tell us the truth. I could cite more examples.
Let’s be honest, reporters and editors aren’t very popular these days. Trump labels them often as “enemies of the people” and denigrates reporters who write things he doesn’t like. He’s also sued several news organizations over petty grievances -- news organizations that he doesn’t like.
Government officials, when they screw up, would rather not read about it on the front page of a paper or a website. Hegseth, I gotta believe, wasn’t too happy when the media revealed that he’d accidentally, and carelessly, shared details of a secret air strike with a magazine editor.
But consider this – do you want government officials to hand pick what we know and shouldn’t know? You trust them to always tell you what’s going on, even when that’s bad news?
Would you have rather not heard what our governor leaders really thought about the Vietnam War?
I’ve seen this over and over when covering Nebraska state government. And while I believe that the vast majority of folks who work in government are honest and want to serve the public, there’s those who figure it’s a chance to cut corners, enrich themselves, and make their agency look good. We need reporters, as well as inspector generals and auditors, to provide an essential double check.
It’s not the job of a reporter to take down everything a governor or president says and decide that it must be true. “Trust but verify” was Ronald Reagan’s famous warning.
We spend more than $900 billion on defense. That’s dollars you and I pay as taxes. We deserve to know, exactly, how our money is being spent, and that it’s not being spent on $300 toilet lids or billion dollar warships or jets that don’t pass muster.
Almost every reporter turned in their Pentagon press passes in response to the awful new rules proposed by Hegseth. And rightly so.
The last thing we need is some agency chief spoon-feeding us wh at he believes we should, and shouldn’t know about how our dollars are being spent.
Paul Hammel has covered state government and the state for decades. Prior to his retirement, he was senior contributor with the Nebraska Examiner. He was previously with the Omaha World-Herald, Lincoln Journal Star and Omaha Sun. A native of Ralston, Nebraska, he loves traveling and writing about the state.
