Consider the power of this statement then: if they were ok with all of those things and now they draw a line that means that things have gotten much, much worse than they were before.
So one possible (admittedly uncharitable) take is that they were OK with all those other things because those things didn't hurt them, and might've helped them. They're not OK with this change not because it makes things worse, but because it makes things worse /for them/.
There are countless reasons why they are acting now when they haven't before and most of them do not support what you are implying.
I'd quite like to actually see what the rules are, but this is just a complex one. On the one hand, obviously the US military would probably have an easier time securing classified info if unreliable people aren't wandering through the building. On the other hand, the US people do benefit from random people wandering the building and would get more out of looser requirements on who can get in. Making it easy to keep information classified has always been a strategic error that has probably done a lot of damage to the US.
Hold up, that's starting to conflate two very different ideas of what's going on:
1. "We cannot tolerate any outside visitors because it could possibly give them an opportunity to commit espionage and other serious federal crimes.
2. "We cannot tolerate specific vetted reporters that haven't promised us control over what they write and how they write it."
We can tell this isn't a (#1) concern over actual security. If it were, this (#2) "deal" would never be offered at all.
This is about controlling messages and opinions, rather than securing specific facts.
* whether you need to limit people learning something
* whether you need to limit people publishing something
"they might be spies" is an issue for the first, but the new rules infringe on the last one too.
1 has to do with secrecy levels, and those were already there, cause you don't want people to look at top secret files even if they are not journalists.
You do want journalists to raise issues on newspapers tho.
If that's the case, shouldn't we also ban the top brass from restaurants, bars, churches and golf courses lest they encounter strangers there?
I know classified US secrets, the leaks around the Snowden era were pretty interesting. Guarantee you the people in the building know more than me. The NOFORN stuff actually tends to be the spiciest if you feel an urge to go look at something.
Strike packages being leaked before launch? Yes. Yes, that’s new. We spent a lot of time and money to get that access in WWII. It was what Turing built the Enigma to do.
I'm surprised they were let in the building in the first place. Should I be allowed to go if I have a press pass?
Under the new rules this would not have been allowed, either, unless the information was pre-approved messaging.
I can think of one. Name ends on Hegseth.
And that same lying press and propaganda club that roenxi is arguing against here reported his gaffe pretty accurately, which if they had been who he claims they are they never would have.
Source?
The concern is the "you can't report on anything we don't want you to" rule.