…who doesn’t march to the beat of the Pentagon’s drummer. It is alarming enough that much of the media have voluntarily fallen into lockstep with the Administration, but not content with that, they now want to silence the remainder who refuse to compromise their ethics to churn out propaganda.
“When George Bush’s Pentagon doesn’t like what a reporter writes, it attempts a preemptive strike. In the case of Tom Ricks, military reporter for the Washington Post, the Pentagon took the attack right to the heart of the enemy. Defense Department spokesman Larry DiRita first sent a letter of complaint to the Post; then he met with the paper’s top editors to press his points.
“Ricks is one of the most senior defense reporters in the country. He covered military affairs for the Wall Street Journal for 17 years and has been doing the same for the Post since 1999. He’s written two books about the military, one about the Marines and a novel about the US intervention in Afghanistan, published four months before the United States sent in troops.
“In his more than two decades covering the military, Ricks has developed many sources, from brass to grunts. This, according to the current Pentagon, is a problem…”
see: Pentagon to Washington Post Reporter Ricks