The Trump administration is increasing its war on the media, with a new line of attack seeming to be that outlets reporting on Gaza are fuelling a rise in anti-Semitism in the US.
Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, has accused AP, The New York Times and CNN of spreading “lies” and Hamas propaganda in their coverage of the long-overdue distribution of aid in Gaza, where Israel only recently began to allow food in after a nearly three-month blockade. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt levied similar charges against the BBC.
Dozens of people were shot or wounded in an incident at a food distribution centre on Sunday. It remains unclear what exactly happened, largely because Israel has banned international journalists from entering the Palestinian territory.
Israel denied shooting at people but witnesses and residents told The National that the Israeli army fired at civilians. The Red Cross reported a "mass casualty influx" of 179 people at a field hospital in Rafah, of whom 21 were declared dead on arrival.
Yet somehow, and with total and unequivocal certainty, Mr Huckabee knows that any reports of the Israeli military shooting at people as they tried to collect food are false.
“There were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos,” he said in a statement published by the US embassy. “The only source for these misleading, exaggerated and utterly fabricated stories came from Hamas sources, which are designed to fan the flames of anti-Semitic hate that is arguably contributing to violence against Jews in the United States."
He said the news outlets are “contributing to the anti-Semitic climate” that led to the murder of Israeli embassy staff members in Washington and the terror attack on a group of pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado at the weekend.
The former Arkansas governor further demanded “an immediate retraction of the lies” and called on the media to act with “objective professionalism”.
Could Hamas have been involved in the shootings or exaggerated casualty numbers? It’s possible. Could the Israeli military have opened fire on groups of civilians? It’s also possible, and they acknowledged firing warning shots at crowds in an incident on Tuesday.
In time, more details will emerge of what has been happening at these aid distribution sites. If the media have got it wrong, we will correct the record. One wonders if Mr Huckabee would do the same.
The ambassador's statement came days after Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth expanded his own war on the press. He issued a memo banning Pentagon reporters from roaming around America's military headquarters, a privilege they have enjoyed for decades under Republican and Democratic administrations.
America used to pride itself on granting media access to the heart of its defence ministry, but now Mr Hegseth says reporters need a minder even if they are to walk from the “bullpen” where they work to any of the Navy, Army or Marine Corps press offices dotted around the enormous building.
"There is no way to sugarcoat it. [The] memo by Secretary Hegseth appears to be a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing," the Pentagon Press Association wrote.
Mr Hegseth, who has yet to hold a proper media conference in the Pentagon since taking office, gives the risk of leaks of sensitive information as justification for his clampdown. Strange, considering one of the biggest scandals of Mr Trump’s second term came when the Pentagon chief accidentally shared plans to attack the Houthis on Signal with a journalist.
I should note here that the US State Department is doing much better than the Pentagon, as it continues to provide regular briefings.
Mr Trump has never shown much love for journalists. During his first term, he called us the “enemy of the people” and described as “fake news” many stories that were critical of his administration.
Now in his second term, he is taking his views much further by curtailing traditional media access to White House events while making space for newer, and frequently right-wing, outlets. He is also threatening to sue the media industry and has punished AP for having the temerity to call the "Gulf of America" the Gulf of Mexico in its style guide.
The Trump administration says it is offsetting a liberal bias in the media and boosting transparency for the American public, contrasting his free-wheeling question-and-answer sessions in the Oval Office to his predecessor Joe Biden's carefully stage-managed, yet often bumbling press engagements.
It's a worrying trend with serious ramifications for a country that has long prided itself on its right to free speech, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
