CNN
—
Journalists ask questions, vet the answers and report the results to the public. That’s pretty much the job description.
But the Trump administration is claiming that it’s unpatriotic to do so.
Several days after the US conducted airstrikes in Iran, as the public awaits a clearer picture of the strikes’ impact, President Trump is attacking CNN for reporting on an early US intel assessment that undercut his claims about Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites being “totally obliterated.”
The New York Times is also being targeted by Trump because it matched CNN’s reporting. “They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
CNN and The Times have not demeaned any pilots. But the administration is casting “any questioning of the success of an incredibly difficult military operation as fake, as unappreciative, and as disrespectful to servicemembers,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said on “The Lead” Wednesday evening.
Tapper cited past examples of government deception and said, “history has taught us that the most pro-servicemember action we can take is to ask questions of our leaders, especially in times of war. That, for journalists, is the height of patriotism.”
Indeed, history is replete with proof that it is imperative to ask for evidence of presidential assertions. It is necessary to question official accounts; to wonder if the public is being misled; and to do so regardless of which party is in power.
When President Joe Biden ordered the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan in 2021, CNN was at the forefront in documenting and scrutinizing the chaos that followed. One headline at the time stated, “Biden’s botched Afghan exit is a disaster at home and abroad long in the making.”
When lives are on the line, government officials often have an incentive to hide or obscure the truth — and reporters have a duty to uncover it.
“The truth, which literally hurts, is that every administration lies about war, particularly (though not only) about its reasons for initiating deadly force,” Matt Welch wrote for Reason magazine in 2020.
Welch warned that “too many people turn off their brains once the battle bugle calls” when the opposite response is actually needed.
Trump clearly thinks it is politically advantageous to claim that scrutiny of the Iran strike’s outcome is insulting to the US military and to the country.
At a NATO summit press conference on Wednesday, Trump asserted that the B-2 pilots were “devastated” by Tuesday’s reports about the early intel assessment.
“You should be proud of those pilots and you shouldn’t be trying to demean them,” Trump said in response to a question from NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell.
“There’s a difference, sir, between asking about an assessment” and doubting the pilots, O’Donnell responded, although she was barely audible over the president’s mic.
“No one is questioning the skill of the US military,” O’Donnell added.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took the same tack as Trump at the press conference, charging the press with trying to “spin” the airstrike outcome “for their own political reasons to try to hurt President Trump or our country.”
Later in the day, Trump announced that Hegseth would hold a Thursday morning news conference at the Pentagon “to fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots.”
Their dignity is not in question, however.
“No one is questioning whether this was a heroic and valiant effort on behalf of the United States,” Tapper said Wednesday evening.
The key questions are “about the degree of success of the operation, and the current state of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and what the intelligence — not the politicians — what the intelligence reveals.”
“Our obligation as journalists,” Tapper continued, “is not to praise President Trump, or protect his feelings, or to disparage him,” it’s “to report facts.”
The Times responded to Trump’s all-caps assertion that it teamed up with CNN to “demean one of the most successful military strikes in history” by pointing out the White House’s inconsistency on the subject.
“Yesterday,” The Times said, “President Trump called this ‘fake news.’ But he and his entire national security team subsequently confirmed that the Defense Intelligence Agency did in fact produce the preliminary assessment described in a report by The Times and others. So their statement was fake, not The Times’s reporting.”
CNN also issued a statement after Trump called for Natasha Bertrand, one of three correspondents who broke the initial story, to be fired.
“We stand 100% behind Natasha Bertrand’s journalism and specifically her and her colleagues’ reporting of the early intelligence assessment of the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” the network said. “CNN’s reporting made clear that this was an initial finding that could change with additional intelligence. We have extensively covered President Trump’s own deep skepticism about it.”
“However,” CNN said, “we do not believe it is reasonable to criticize CNN reporters for accurately reporting the existence of the assessment and accurately characterizing its findings, which are in the public interest.”
