A veteran Pentagon correspondent used a Fox News appearance to savage Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for attempting to restrict media access at his department.
Barbara Starr, who spent more than 20 years as CNN’s Pentagon correspondent, claimed Hegseth is ending journalists’ access to certain areas at the Pentagon because he’s “embarrassed” by the chaos engulfing his time in the Trump administration.
“Hegseth is embarrassed,” Starr said on Fox’s MediaBuzz Sunday. “He’s embarrassed by this—so much exposure to information, classified by all accounts, that he posted on Signal about that air attack in Yemen. He’s embarrassed that information came out that he was going to meet with Elon Musk and brief him on China.”
Starr added that Hegseth should be more concerned with how the U.S. will react if Russia’s President Vladimir Putin responds to Ukraine’s large-scale drone attack against Russian military bombers in Siberia, rather than focusing on “the PR structure, if you will, of his press operation.”
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
The Defense Department recently announced it will be scaling back access for journalists covering the Pentagon from inside the government building. The changes include banning reporters from entering certain areas of the Pentagon unless they’re accompanied by an approved government escort.
Hegseth, a former Fox News host, said the changes were needed to protect national security. There have also been multiple leaks during Hegseth’s tenure.
In a May 24 blog post, Starr said she feels a “tremendous sadness” about the press restrictions and noted that Hegseth should understand in his role that “freedom of the press is indeed a life-and-death enterprise on the battlefield.”
Speaking to MediaBuzz host Howard Kurtz, Starr dismissed the idea that restricting press access is a key step to stop reporters from having access to classified information.
“Impossible to do. Reporters have no access to classified areas. Those are locked,” Starr said. “I’m not aware of any instance in which a reporter has accessed classified information in the Pentagon by moving through the hallways and going into classified areas.”
Kurtz also asked Starr to explain why the public should care that Hegseth has only held one news conference since being confirmed as defense secretary.
“Here’s the bottom line: the U.S. military swears an oath to defend the Constitution—the First Amendment—which includes nothing to abridge freedom of the press,” Starr said.
“So this is a life-and-death issue for U.S. forces, and that makes it a life-and-death issue for the media that often accompanies them. This is about the constitutional requirement to maintain a free press in this country. That is what America is all about.”
