WIRED: Venezuela Is the First Big Test for the Pentagon's Influencer Press Corps--and It's Failing

[ancianita]

https://archive.ph/4pGUI

IN THE DAYS following the kidnapping of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro, members of the Pentagon’s new right-wing influencer press corps weren’t reporting on the operation. Instead, they were enforcing loyalty in a manner similar to the Iraq war bloggers of the early 2000s.

On Monday, Laura Loomer tried to crowdsource information on Pentagon press officials who may have leaked information to the mainstream media. “The White House account better be cooking up a sick edit,” Cam Higby, a right-wing influencer and member of the Pentagon press corps, wrote on X Saturday morning, as news of Maduro’s arrest broke. Monica Paige, a reporter for Turning Point USA, opted to slam the former Biden administration, reposting a 2020 post from Joe Biden about Trump admiring dictators with the now infamous image of a blindfolded Maduro. Joey Mannarino, an influencer with more than 650,000 followers on X, spent Sunday debating whether to support vice president JD Vance or Marco Rubio as president for 2028...

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WIRED.

“The influencers, they sound like these armchair warriors who wrote their blogs at home and parroted a lot of what the military said,” says Melissa Wall, a journalism professor at California State University, Northridge, who has written extensively about the warblogging movement of the 2000s. “Are they actually getting any real information? Are they just taking press releases or whatever is given to them?”
“They can just flood the zone,” says Wall of the Pentagon’s new press corp. “They can just put out so much content you can't really find the truth.”

Background from Wikipedia...

In October 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth implemented new press policies with a series of changes that led to multiple news outlets turning in their press credentials, most citing one key rule which places a ban on reporters soliciting any information, classified or otherwise, from government employees without prior authorization from the Pentagon.[citation needed]

The Pentagon called the new press restrictions an important step in "preventing leaks that damage operational security and national security.” Press outlets see the new restrictions as an "attempt to curb First Amendment protections."[9]

October 15, reporters began vacating the press room at the Pentagon removing computer servers, furniture, television screens, soundproofing equipment and other items.[12]

The change in Pentagon press policies and replacement of notable legacy news outlets is one of the latest decisions within the broader trend of increased press and media scrutiny under the Trump administration ... also in 2025 Congress made a $1.1 billion cut to NPR and PBS public broadcasting funds, and President Trump filed a $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal[17].

Increased scrutiny related to the press and media as well as physical safety of journalists and reporting mechanisms can be found on the
Press Freedom Tracker Incident Database, where relevant instances of arrest, assaults, legal orders, damages, or other tactics against the press and media can be reported upon and tracked.[18]

There was backlash in defense trade media. Military Times and Defense News joined other media outlets in the forfeiture, releasing the following statement: "This policy threatens to punish reporters who ask legitimate questions in the course of their daily work and to impose material harm on our news organizations for factual reporting."[10]

Only 15 reporters signed and accepted the new press policy out of hundreds that forfeited their credentials.
Those 15 include staff from
-- The Federalist
-- The Epoch Times and
-- One America News,
as well as reporters working for overseas media outlets, independent reporters and freelancers.[11]

Following the vacating of the press room by non-participating media outlets, the Pentagon invited replacements, including
-- LifeSiteNews,
-- Gateway Pundit, and
-- Human Events.[13]
-- National Pulse,
-- podcaster Tim Pool,
-- Frontlines by Turning Point USA, among others.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Pentagon_press_pass_forfeiture

This post is intended to take another look at the state of this govt's interface with the press, mainstream or not.
As Rachel has impressed upon millions, the work of journalism and journalists are foundational to a democracy.
While some mainstream for-profit media have earned public distrust these days, it's also important to recognize the 'free market' noise current that has surrounded legacy publishers (some founded in the 19th Century). And that our distrust of this govt's messaging should still easily surpass our distrust of legacy media, whose business has been to deal with that messaging. Legacy media's honesty has been a democratic value, not a free market value.

So while millions want an end to this govt's abuses of social media platforms and the WH press corp, WIRED's take informs of another angle on that abuse that must be dealt with.
For that matter, it wouldn't be all that shocking anymore to find out that the Hegseth Pentagon's current press gaggle is using Grok owned by military contractor, Elon Musk.

[UTUSN]

1. K&R