By Brian Stelter, CNN
(CNN) — A version of this article first appeared in the Reliable Sources newsletter. You can sign up for free here.
Wednesday’s Pentagon press briefing by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine gave at least the appearance of transparency.
But the military leaders mostly received kid-glove treatment from the Trump-aligned media outlets that had front-row seats in the briefing room.
And more broadly, as Hegseth says the US is “accelerating” its strikes inside Iran, Pentagon beat reporters say they are not getting answers to key questions about the ongoing military operations. “Lots of chest-thumping, less concrete data” is how one reporter put it.
“The effect of the lack of information is that the war has become something of a black box,” another source said.
Militaries always maintain secrecy amid armed conflicts, and journalists always gather information from a variety of sources, which in 2026 means scouring commercial satellite imagery and dissecting eyewitness videos to better understand the battlefield.
But “in ordinary war times,” one of the Pentagon reporters said, “we would be getting briefings once or twice a day going into minute details about how the war was evolving.”
Instead, “these days, they put a random tweet or video out with details,” with no way for journalists to follow up, another said.
Six longtime US military reporters were granted anonymity for this assessment of the push-and-pull between the Pentagon and the press corps.
Several of the reporters noted a video released Tuesday night by Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of US Central Command. Cooper shared several valuable details — “we’ve already struck nearly 2,000 targets with more than 2,000 munitions,” he said — in the video.
But gone are the days of background briefings with military officials who could get into those specifics — and field follow-up questions. “The Pentagon hasn’t allowed them to brief us yet,” one of the reporters said.
Or perhaps the White House is the chokepoint. Pentagon beat reporters frequently follow up with military representatives via phone and email. But “virtually everything gets referred to the White House,” including operational questions, another reporter said. As a result, “most of what we gather is through leaks and Signal messaging, off the books.”
Through those efforts, the public is getting a more balanced picture, beyond the bravado of Hegseth’s statements.
Two different briefings in one
On Wednesday, Hegseth made an incendiary, though unsurprising for him, charge: That the press prominently covers service member casualties to “make the president look bad.”
Hegseth has a long history of using the media as a foil, even when he was himself a member of the media, hosting shows on Fox News.
From his Pentagon podium, Hegseth alluded to the Iranian drone strike in Kuwait that killed six service members and said, “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality. The terms of this war will be set by us at every step.”
Caine, on the other hand, began his remarks by expressing “profound sadness and gratitude” for the deaths in Kuwait. “There were almost two briefings going on,” one by Hegseth and the other by Caine, CNN’s John Berman said afterward.
Washington Post military affairs reporter Dan Lamothe tweeted about the importance of covering military casualties, including, yes, on the front page: The press has “highlighted sacrifices by American service members and their families, and shortcomings that sometimes allowed those deaths t