Remarks by\u00a0Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth\u00a0that the American press emphasizes U.S. casualties in\u00a0the Iran war\u00a0because it “wants to make the president look bad” are a reminder of something that has endured across many decades and conflicts: the tension and trepidation about news that reminds Americans of the human cost of war.<\/p>\n
During his\u00a0Pentagon briefing\u00a0on the war on Wednesday, Hegseth bashed “fake news” while addressing the six U.S. Army reservists\u00a0killed in an Iranian attack\u00a0on an operations center in Kuwait.<\/p>\n
WATCH: Hegseth holds news conference on war with Iran updates<\/a><\/p>\n “When a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news,” Hegseth said. “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.”<\/p>\n White House\u00a0press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when questioned about the remark by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at her own news conference later, doubled down. “You take every single thing this administration says and try to use it to make the president look bad,” Leavitt said. “That’s an objective fact.”<\/p>\n newsletter id=”politics” style=”yellow” \/]<\/p>\n Memories of night after night of graphic images beamed into homes through a then-recent invention \u2014 television \u2014 were hard to shake for those who lived through the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Many believed the cumulative impact of seeing that suffering night after night turned Americans from supporters to skeptics.<\/p>\n READ MORE: Majority of Americans oppose military action in Iran, new poll finds<\/a><\/p>\n Such vivid, intimate scenes of military action by Americans haven’t been seen to that extent since, a legacy still in place with the war that\u00a0President Donald Trump\u00a0and Hegseth are waging right now on behalf of the United States.<\/p>\n “For many presidents, the lesson seemed to be: Don’t allow the realities of war into people’s living rooms if you can help it,” said Timothy Naftali, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.<\/p>\n Coverage of war \u2014 and access to it \u2014 have changed<\/p>\n Today, the images the public sees of warfare can resemble a video game \u2014 explosions seen lighting up the sky from afar \u2014 with the pain much more private.<\/p>\n Generations ago during World War II, journalists were embedded with the military, and many became household names \u2014 reporters Ernie Pyle and Walter Cronkite, photographers Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White. Those were the days before television, however.<\/p>\n Vietnam was arguably the most accessible American war for reporters. Journalists stationed in the country sent back a steady stream of death and destruction.<\/p>\n Cronkite, by then a CBS-TV anchorman of the most popular evening news program in the U.S., reported from Vietnam in 1968 and concluded the only rational way out was a negotiated peace. “If I’ve lost Cronkite,” President Lyndon Johnson said, “I’ve lost Middle America.”<\/p>\n During the Gulf War in 1991, President George H.W. Bush was angered by split-screen television images that showed the coffins of U.S. service members being returned to the United States while he, apparently unaware of the timing, was joking with reporters about another subject at the White House. The Pentagon banned coverage of these ceremonies, saying it was to protect the privacy of family members of the dead, although critics said it was to avoid showing pictures of coffins.<\/p>\n