When Pete Hegseth ordered Pentagon reporters to sign new press rules in October 2025, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS refused in a joint statement with Fox News. Hegseth filled the seats they gave up with Gateway Pundit, Tim Pool, LindellTV and Turning Point's Frontlines, more than 60 people in a new press corps. At the White House, Karoline Leavitt took control of the press pool from the correspondents' association in February 2025 and handed seats usually held by the Associated Press and Reuters to Newsmax and Blaze Media.

Walking out of the Pentagon did not stop the same networks repeating the regime’s account of its own silly Iran war. When U.S. forces bombed Iran’s Qeshm Island on 2 November, the day before the midterms, CBS headlined it "U.S. launches defensive strikes at Iranian targets near Strait of Hormuz", ABC went with "US carries out defensive airstrikes on Iran’s Qeshm Island: Officials" and CNN wrote that the military struck "in defensive operation, officials say".

The word "defensive" does not apply to the USA's attack on Iran, and Reuters, the Associated Press, the Washington Post and Politico used it too, for an attack on another country's sovereign territory. By July the Pentagon those reporters had walked out of had gone two and a half months without a single press briefing.

The USA needs to get past these old outlets and onto modern outlets that are honest, and won't just go with the flow when they themselves are under attack. Independent newsrooms will not out-spend the corporate press, but they can out-report it together, we're hoping our Rooted News website can help that. But this isn't an ad for Rooted, so I'll get on to the broader criticism of the USA's media sphere.