In an Ongoing Attack on the Media, Hegseth Bans Press Photographers from the DOD for Not Making Him Look Glamorous Enough

Tough-guy Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is about as insecure about his appearance as the average middle-school girl. So in a comical twist—with a serious underlying point—he is now banning press photographers from the Pentagon for taking unflattering photos of him.

The Washington Post reports:

The Defense Department has barred press photographers from briefings on the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military conflict with Iran after they published photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that his staff deemed “unflattering,” according to two people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. …

The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), which advocates for photographers’ rights, condemned the Defense Department’s decision in a statement after this article was published, and called upon the Pentagon to restore access to banned photographers. The group also said retaliation against photographers raises fresh First Amendment concerns.

“Excluding photographers from Pentagon briefings because officials did not like how published images portrayed them shows an astonishingly poor sense of priorities in the midst of a war and is, for a public servant, not a good look,” NPPA President Alex Garcia said. “A free press cannot function if government officials decide that only favorable images of public officials may be created or distributed.”

The serious point beneath this little comedy is that it is part of a wider war against an independent press. These photographers were only recently let back in after Hegseth banned most of the press from the Pentagon in favor of toadies from often obscure right-wing outlets.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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