The institutional pathology on display here is not, strictly speaking, novel. What is novel is the candor.
Chabe01 (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia CommonsRichard Allee, an executive assistant in CENTCOM’s public affairs office, told a reporter from The Intercept that the command maintains a list of journalists it simply refuses to engage. “You’ll be put on a list of people to disregard,” he said. Asked to confirm: yes. Asked who is on it: “It’s not a list that we publicize.” Then he hung up.
CENTCOM subsequently issued a statement denying the existence of any “blacklist,” which is the kind of semantic maneuver that would earn a freshman a failing grade in a logic seminar. A list of people to disregard is a blacklist. Calling it a directory or a roster or an internal tracking document does not change its function, which is to systematically exclude certain journalists from access to information about what the United States military is doing with the public’s money and in the public’s name.
United States Central Command, part of the United States Department of Defense (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsThis is the part where one is expected to express shock. I confess I lack the energy. The literature on government press suppression is extensive and, at this point, almost tediously well-documented. What we are watching is not a departure from institutional norms but the logical acceleration of them.
Consider the trajectory. In January 2025, Defense Secretary Pete