Media in Minutes

A Veteran Pentagon Reporter on Access, Misinformation and the Future of Defense Journalism with Jamie McIntyre

• Angela Tuell • Season 5 • Episode 26

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A chance assignment after the Gulf War put Jamie McIntyre inside the Pentagon at the very moment history refused to slow down. From Somalia to Haiti to Kosovo and Iraq, he learned that the defense beat isn’t just policy on paper—it’s operations, people and real-world stakes. Jamie shares how that era’s open access let reporters roam the halls, build sources, and pressure-test official narratives in real time, and why the shift to tighter control is more than an inconvenience—it’s a loss for the public.

We dive into how he rebuilt his reporting toolkit for a remote-first world: livestreamed hearings, transcript, and a carefully curated X feed that filters signal from noise. Then we compare that to an uncurated stream—an eye-opening look at how the platform can reward rage, rabbit holes and confusion. The takeaway is practical and urgent: your inputs shape your reality, and journalists now serve as both investigators and filters in an age that monetizes doubt.

Jamie also opens up about the hardest problem in the craft: convincing people to trust what’s true. He was in the Pentagon on 9/11 and later spent a decade engaging “truthers,” never changing a single mind. That experience informs a frank discussion on misinformation and identity, why facts alone often fail and how context-heavy reporting helps readers think more clearly. We wrap with candid advice for younger journalists, a look at Jamie’s book plans—either a study of disinformation or a Cold War-era memoir—and a measured sense of hope rooted in history’s long arc toward justice.

If you value clear, reality-based reporting on defense and national security, hit follow, share the show with a friend, and leave a quick review with the one insight you’re taking away today.

Links & Resources

  • Daily on Defense – Jamie McIntyre’s weekday newsletter offering clear, experience-driven context on U.S. defense and national security. Sign up here.
  • Elements of Disbelief – Jamie’s writing on misinformation, conspiracy theories, and why false beliefs persist, rooted in his academic research on 9/11.
  • Jamie McIntyre – Washington Examiner – Read Jamie’s defense and national security reporting.
Angela:

Welcome to Media in Minutes. This is your host, Angela Tuell. This podcast features in-depth interviews with those who report on the world around us. They share everything from their favorite stories to what happened behind the lens and give us a glimpse into their world. From our studio here at Communications Redefined, this is Media in Minutes. Today we're talking with Jamie McIntyre, senior writer covering defense and national security for the Washington Examiner. Jamie's newsletter, Jamie McIntyre's Daily on Defense, goes out each weekday to thousands of national security professionals, opinion leaders, and others, making him a must-read voice on issues ranging from Pentagon policy to global military developments. An internationally known journalist with more than 40 years of experience, Jamie served as CNN's military affairs and senior Pentagon correspondent from 1992 to 2008, reporting from countries around the world and covering the defense beat through major global events. He's also reported for Al Jazeera America, NPR's All Things Considered, and started his career in radio at WTOP News in Washington, D.C. Hi, Jamie.

Speaker:

Hi, Angela.

Angela:

How are things in uh Maryland, D.C. area?

Speaker:

Getting ready for the holidays.

Angela:

Yeah. And the weather's cold, I'm sure.

Speaker:

I uh a lot of people tell me I should move uh south now that I'm getting older, but I enjoy the change of seasons. Okay, love the Washington area, and so I'm gonna stick here.

Angela:

Yes, it's a fantastic place. So let's jump in. You've spent more than four decades in journalism from radio news to your current role at the Washington Examiner. What first drew you into reporting and how did you find your way to the defense and national security beat?

Speaker:

All right. Well, so I practiced an answer to that question, and it takes me about 20 minutes. So I think we're gonna need uh uh either an extended time or more episodes. No, I'll keep it, I'll keep it short. When I was in college, I took a uh a public speaking class, and uh they had this new innovation back in the early 1970s, a a video recorder, uh a Sony video recorder with reel-to-reel tape and a black and white camera. And my speech professor had this idea that he would uh record all of our speeches at the end of our public speaking class, and we would critique the video tape, which was really exciting because nobody was on TV back then. And I saw myself uh in this performance and I thought something clicked. And I said, you know, I could be on TV, but I would like to be a journalist. And I transferred to the University of Florida and studied journalism, and of course, it was a lot different world back then. Yes, and I uh my first job was in radio at a small station in Gainesville, Florida, where I was a newsman. That's what this past May I marked the 50th anniversary of being a journalist because that was when my first paycheck, I got my first paycheck in May of 1975. So flash forward, um not a lot of I worked in radio, I worked in local television, I worked at uh I was the voice of C SPAN for a while. I used to say this. I uh this was me on C SPAN. C-SPAN in our companion network, C-SPAN 2, are privately funded to serve the public by America's cable television networks. Um so that was one of my claims to fame. Um I ended up at CNN as uh the youngest reporter in the Bureau in 1992, and it was right after the Gulf War. And uh Wolf Blitzer had just been promoted to White House correspondent, and nobody in the Bureau wanted to go to the Pentagon because the big war was over. The 1991 Gulf War was over. And as the junior person in the bureau, I got assigned to the Pentagon, which everybody thought was just going to be a sleepy beat after the war was over, but it turned out to be like the Pentagon correspondent full employment policy because within weeks of my arrival, the United States was going into Somalia, and then in 1990, uh in 1992, and then in 1993 we had attacks on Iraq, and then in 1994, the U.S. intervened in Haiti, and it just went on and on. Um, Iraq, Kosovo, the Kos the Yugoslav War, and I ended up working as the senior correspondent, uh Pentagon correspondent for CNN for about 16 years, and during that time I traveled to more than 60 countries and logged more than 500,000 miles of uh air travel and got to see the world.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker:

And it was um it was just happenstance, which is which you find when the career in journalism a lot of times you know, people like to say that they they rose through the ranks because of their hard work and initiative, and um, and that's part of it, but part of it is just being lucky enough to be at a place at the right time to get a good assignment and get a chance to prove yourself.

Angela:

Yes. And then you have to prove yourself, but you had that chance to to prove yourself.

Speaker:

Well, I have to say, but it the Pentagon, it take it took a while. Okay. Uh when I first was started covering the Pentagon, which is uh uh a real challenge, I didn't have any sources. I I uh uh couldn't find my way around the building. I was kind of lost. My bosses in Atlanta were having to second thoughts about having me stay there. Uh, but my bureau chief in Washington believed in me, and he kept telling him, just give him some time, he'll figure it out. He's a good reporter. And uh because of that, I was was able to establish my reputation and uh and and stay for a good long time.

Angela:

Yes. What were some of the biggest lessons you learned while covering the Pentagon?

Speaker:

Well, covering the Pentagon, by the way, and it has completely changed now with the new administration, but covering the Pentagon was one of the best beats you could get because all of the beats in Washington have policy, deal with policy, but the Pentagon had operations. And the Pentagon, and I'm sad to say this is not the case anymore, was one of the most open and transparent beats you could be on. Pentagon for decades allowed reporters to have offices inside the Pentagon and freely roam the corridors of the Pentagon, not the classified offices, but the corridors, and talk to people uh and develop relationships with public affairs officers and senior officers, travel with uh top uh defense officials and really learn the beat from the inside out. And um, as I said, there's policy, but there's also operations. There were also many social stories, uh relevant stories to cover, such as, you know, uh the lifting of banana gays in the military or women in combat, or and then there was also just science and technology stories about you know new kinds of weapons and space lasers and developments in med military medicine. There was such a wide variety of stories that you could cover from the Pentagon. And uh it was uh it was a fantastic place to cover. That's all been shut down now with the new administration who uh doesn't want any reporters covered wandering around the Pentagon or talking to people and just wants to confine reporters to what uh what they want to uh tell them they can report.

Angela:

Did you ever think that would happen?

Speaker:

You know, honestly, there were times I I marveled at the fact that the Pentagon was such an open beat, and I did have the bizarre thought on several occasions, you know, like someday, someday somebody's gonna come in here and say, This is crazy. Why do we let reporters do this? And they're gonna ban us to some uh trailer in the parking lot. I actually had that thought. I didn't really think it would happen because it was so advantageous, not just to the reporters, but to the Pentagon and the military itself. The relationship between the military and the media was was a very good one. It was it was adversarial, but it was a friendly and respectful adversarial, which benefited both sides. Um so I was really lucky to be there at what I think was sort of the golden age of Pentagon reporting.

Angela:

Yeah. What has been your personal experience now? Are you no longer in there?

Speaker:

No, I um I could sort of see the handwriting on the wall when the new administration came in. I made a couple of pitches to um, you know, to travel with the new defense secretary and uh to do some and to interview some people, and I I could pretty much see that they were not interested in in doing that. And so when my when my press pass expired in May, um I just decided not to renew it. I've been covering the Pentagon mostly remotely since the pandemic anyway. I don't do the same kind of deeply source breaking news that I used to do when I was on the beat and and living in the Pentagon.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker:

I do more uh in my newsletter daily on defense, I do more, try to put more uh contextual reporting, taking the uh information that's available to everybody and just trying to put it in context. So I gave up my press pass. Um and uh um I've been watching from afar as they uh little by little reduced the access and um became more and more antagonistic to um what we would call the legacy media or the mainstream media. Um and so um it's the end of an era. Uh I don't know if it'll ever come back to the way it was. It depends on what some new administration decides to do. But um those days are gone. Those were the good old days.

Angela:

Yeah. You know, we always think we hear our you know, grandparents or older people say things like that. And then when we experience it, it's uh quite I guess you understand at that point. But the Washington Examiner is widely viewed, tell me if I'm wrong, as a conservative leaning outlet, correct?

Speaker:

It is, yes.

Angela:

And that did not play a role at all in the Pentagon's access.

Speaker:

So I would have thought uh that that might have been to our advantage. Um that we were seeing now, and just to be clear, although the editorial uh slant of the Washington Examiner is definitely conservative, um but uh I I was assured by my boss when he hired me back in 2016 that I would be free to uh uh from any sort of editorial interference, I would just report the same way I did when I was um a reporter at WTOP Radio or at Channel 9 uh in Washington, D.C., or when I was at CNN, or when I reported for Al Jazeera America, which was a news organization funded by Qatar, um, I would just do the same thing. And I have to say, in the 10 years that I've been working for the Examiner, nobody at the Examiner has ever uh questioned or tried to influence or even um uh uh suggested that I report anything in a different way. So uh, you know, I feel like I've been able to fulfill my journalism mission, which is to bring, which I believe is to bring facts to bear on a story, provide context, and hopefully provide the readers with some uh factual, reality-based information so they can make better judgments. Um I I've been very happy to to work at the examiner. When I I joined the examiner when Al Jazeera America, and I like to say Al Jazeera America, because it's a completely it was a completely different network than Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker:

Um they went out of business. And frankly, as an older uh journalist, there weren't there aren't a lot of opportunities. I'm I I didn't want to go back into television because I had been doing that for so long, and it's a very long and arduous day sometimes. So I really welcome the I the chance to do something that was to do a newsletter and to try to draw my experience to um to do something that I thought was was worth reading.

Angela:

Yes. Do you find that your audience, because of your, you know, even though Washington Examiner is seen as conservative leaning, because of your work and do you find your audience is on both sides of the aisle?

Speaker:

Well, it's hard to it's hard to tell. Initially, when I started writing, I got a lot of feedback, uh, especially from anybody who thought uh that I wasn't sufficiently um conservative. But though those people kind of uh made their, you know, because one of the things about my newsletter is my email's right on it, and you can just email me if you're not happy with something.

Angela:

Um that's why you get a million emails a day.

Speaker:

Yeah, well, not not so much from readers anymore, because they I my readership, as far as I can tell, has sort of settled into um people who value the newsletter and like it. A lot of I have a lot of readers on Capitol Hill, a lot of retired military people, just people who are interested in national security. Um, and I hear from them occasionally, but I don't get many complaints because I think anybody who wasn't happy with the newsletter early on or with my reporting is has just doesn't subscribe to it. There's no requirement. Contrary to popular belief, no one in America is required to re to re uh to subscribe to my newsletter.

Angela:

So sometimes I wish everyone in America was required to subscribe to journalists stories and newsletters, but so daily, how do you find your stories and you know what you include in the newsletter?

Speaker:

So it's really a challenge. Um but it was made easier by the pandemic because when the pandemic happened, a lot of things began to go online. A lot of events in Washington that you had to cover in person, whether it was a think tank forum or even a Pentagon briefing or Capitol Hill a hearing on Capitol Hill, all of these began to be live streamed and in many cases transcribed, uh, which allows me to sit in my office at home or have a nice uh window out the back of my house looking out into the woods, um, and sit there and monitor to cover multiple things at once that I couldn't do if I had to do it physically. And um so that that's what I do. I rely a lot on remote feeds, transcripts, and um and also social media. I was a a big skeptic about Twitter when it first started. Uh a friend of mine cajoled me into creating a Twitter account. And uh I just said, like, you know, I why why do I need this for? But now um I have uh in fact I have two Twitter accounts. I have one that I started years ago, um really decades ago, I think it's 20 years now, um where I've curated the account to who I follow. And I follow world leaders and other journalists and people that I um, you know, members of Congress, lawmakers, people who are direct sources of information, you know, like I follow uh Volodymyr Zelensky, for instance. Uh and I get a lot of uh tips and news from those uh Twitter feeds, which then I can follow up on. And just coincidentally, and as a sidebar, um when I got a new iPad a while back, because my old iPad was no longer um able to run the software I wanted, yeah. And I tried to log on to Twitter in my new iPad, it it somehow created a new account for me that I didn't ask for. It just kind of generated a name and created an account. And I realized I I wasn't in my account, I was just in some new account, and I was about to delete it because I, you know, I didn't want it. And then I realized that this new account, which was not curated at all, uh, was a window into what other people are seeing on X, it's called now. Right. And it gave me this there was this huge difference between what I was exposed to on social media on my curated X account and what the average person who doesn't maybe follow uh your trusted sources and just watching whatever pops up in their feed, what they see. And there's a big difference.

Angela:

Yes, isn't it amazing? I mean, and amazing is not the right word.

Speaker:

Yeah, people fall down a rabbit hole. Yes, um because it's all clickbait, it's all just designed to keep you watching. Um so every once in a while I I I switch over to that one to see what other other people are seeing on social media.

Angela:

Yeah, and it keeps you in this bubble because it continues to feed what you look at or what you see, you know, continues to feed you similar things.

Speaker:

So I feel like you don't why you get a lot of cat videos.

Angela:

That can help when you need a little break, right?

Speaker:

I think it's actually the highest and best use of X is for cat videos.

Angela:

Yes.

Speaker:

Which are I have to say cut above the dog videos, but they're okay.

Angela:

Well, now they're becoming AI too, though. So you're like, which ones are real? Did this really happen or not? You know?

Speaker:

Well, I'm pretty sure those, you know, cats diving off the high dive was real because it looked real to me.

Angela:

Right, right. I I would love to know what are some misconceptions you hear most often about US military or defense policy from the public, and and how do you address those in your reporting?

Speaker:

So I think the biggest challenge that you have as a reporter, and it's uh and also you know, a reporter covering the US military or defense policy, but really any policy, is the to to combat the misinformation and disinformation that's out there. And um the probably the biggest takeaway that I I took from my time at the Pentagon coincidentally happened on on uh September 11th in 2001 when I was in the Pentagon and American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building. Uh and I reported on it. And um and I actually wrote my master's thesis at the University of Maryland on the conspiracy theories that sprung up around 9-11 and how difficult it was to combat them.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker:

And it it really it really impressed on me how hard it is um for honest, hardworking uh um reporters who try to be uh to put their biases aside and just focus on facts and context, it is for them to to actually persuade people of what's true and to counter things that are obviously not true. And I experienced it, it really came up I experienced it firsthand with the September 11th attacks because, and I I won't bore you with the whole story, but if anybody's interested they could read my master's thesis at um it's online at uh elements of disbelief at blogspot.com.

Angela:

Okay.

Speaker:

It's uh but but basically I detail how for 10 years I talked to I uh reported on the so-called 9-11 truthers who didn't believe that a plane hit the Pentagon they believed it was an inside job or it was a missile that hit the Pentagon and that the official story was a cover up and uh I was there and I I could tell you a plane did hit the Pentagon. Right and it was a real plane and it took off from Dulles Airport and had real people on it. Some of the people even called their loved ones from the plane. Yeah the wreckage of the plane was in the parking lot I saw it I picked up a piece and looked at it. We know that a plane hit the Pentagon uh but there are but there are millions of people who don't believe it who believe that it's it's uh it's a fake story and I engaged with some of them because I was really curious about whether I could explain to them that they they were wrong. And these were really most of the people I engaged with were really smart people. I mean they they could uh they would argue with me about the flight dynamics of a 750 757 but in the 10 years I engaged with the so-called 911 truthers I never changed one of their minds not one said to me you know Jamie after I've talked to you I I see that I was wrong I I guess the plane did hit the Pentagon not one and that impressed on me how difficult it is once somebody has adopted a belief and it's part of their identity it's very difficult for them to to give it up and it's you know and and a lot of things are debatable. A lot of things we don't know the answer to and you can have a an honest debate about them but there's some things we know are true. And the example I I sometimes use is the is the flat earthers um there's a very interesting documentary on Netflix profiling the flat people who believe the earth is flat called I think it's called Beyond the Curve and the thing that you take away from it is no amount of logic reason scientific facts can convince somebody that the earth is round once they've decided they think it's flat.

Angela:

And I'm here to tell you the earth is not flat that is fascinating and sad slash scary at the same time.

Speaker:

Well it's first I think it's frustrating the big frustration you have is that we're in an inflammate information ecosystem that's flooded with bad information and it's it's not necessarily that everybody can be convinced of something that's false is true. It's just that it introduces doubt. All you have to do is get somebody to doubt that what they thought was true is not true anymore or might not be true. And then you've we've reached a part where nobody can decide what truth is and I I've had friends who say you know what I I you know I don't know what to believe anymore. I really I just don't know what to believe. And that's that's what's I think really dangerous for our our um our society and our democratic society is that we uh we we are losing our grip on understanding what is true and what is factual um and it's making it harder and harder for us to um to make the kind of intelligent decisions we need to as a society.

Angela:

Yes and we used actually we still do but you you know count on journalists for that but then there's so many people that are discrediting journalists.

Speaker:

Right so I mean and that's the main thing that's happened at the Pentagon since in the last in this administration is there's been a war on on journalists they they routinely call us fake news uh they say we lie about everything um and you can't keep up you can't defend yourself or keep up with it it's just an onslaught of and the whole point is to get people not to trust um journalists and you know journalists make mistakes journalists have personal biases um you know we're all subject to human thinking errors of you know um mistaking correlation for causation or uh confirmation bias where we tend to believe things that are we already believe so we believe them again. But in my experience and I've been doing this for 50 years um the journalists that I've worked with and and competed against are not in that business they're not in the business of making stuff up and to and uh they're they're honestly trying to do the best job they can to figure out the best version of the truth based on the facts that are available. Yes. And but you know uh I I one of the big dangerous trends is um people don't trust journalists anymore. And the um they've been very effective in you know in lowering the amount of confidence that people have in the media.

Angela:

Yeah.

Speaker:

But along with a lot of other institutions by the way nobody trusts politicians or Congress or healthcare. Yes um yeah medical professionals um so that's the world we're in yeah so to you the young younger people I pass the torch.

Angela:

I I wish I was as young as as I might sound but yes I do I mean it's such a it's such a disheartening frustrating upsetting topic um and what still so I guess what still keeps you in the field and what excites you if it if there is money out the high paying career you know of money.

Speaker:

If anyone didn't know journalists make so much well I I am fortunate that I have a full-time staff job that I can do largely from home and I and I have bosses who appreciate what I do and not everybody has that. If you're a freelance journalist or if you're working um and if or particularly if you're starting as a journalist now yeah it's not you know the best advice career advice you can give somebody who's starting as a journalist now is to is to marry or partner with somebody who has a good paying job. Yes so you can follow your passion. But I still think it's nice to have a platform where you can you know throw some information out there and hope it sticks to somebody's brain. Although I don't worry at my advanced age I don't worry so much if um if I'm convincing anyone because often I I think I'm just um talking preaching to the choir and I'm reaching readers who already are are thinking along the lines that I'm thinking of or think that what I'm saying makes sense. And the ones that don't aren't I'm not reaching them. But I feel like you know it's what is the old saying it's better to light a single candle than curse the darkness. I'm just um lighting a single candle out there. And I I don't plan to do this forever. I have uh I'm not one of these journalists whose entire self-worth is wrapped up in his job. And um I plan to retire and uh sometime soon and start writing some books that I want to write and trying to in uh enjoy my uh life and uh I've had a you know I've had a uh what I would consider to be uh a remarkably successful career considering that I was a poor student both in high school and and when I first got into college I did start doing better once I figured out I wanted to be a news reporter a journalist um and I did do do well which isn't a which is a a lesson that um people do a lot better in school once they figure out what they want to do. Yes that is than if they're just going to classes and trying to make some grades.

Angela:

Yes I have always told my husband that I want to tell our children I don't care what they want to be when they grow up I can be anything but I want them to have an idea and in college you know know what they if they can know what they'd like to do. I think that is that is very that's much more helpful. What will your um books be about do you know?

Speaker:

Well yeah I'm um so a lot of people have suggested that I write uh write about uh disinformation and uh sort of extending my my thesis work uh you know my thesis was called Elements of Disbelief a case study of 9-11 truthers and the persistence of misinformation in the digital age because you know you have to have a kind of academic sounding title to the book. Yeah right um but my I told my thesis advisor um that if I wrote a book I was going to call it uh based on I was gonna call stuck on stupid why smart people believe dumb things because part of my research for my thesis was about um thinking errors that we all make as humans that lead us to be to make bad decisions and um and how we all do it. I mean we're all human. But I realized after a while that there are hundreds of books on that subject really good books on on it. A lot of them I read when I was doing my thesis and I don't think I want to add one more book to the pile. Instead I'm probably going to write uh a memoir of sorts not about my illustrious career as a journalist but as my my time growing up as a child in the in during the uh during the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis and with a single mom and you know every family has a story. I'm sure your family has a story and and there's secrets in those you know old family stories too that have been buried sometimes have been buried for years. And um so I'm gonna write I think I'm gonna write about that because I just think it'd be a lot more interesting. I don't know if I don't know that it would be a bestseller. But my I think it might but I might but I I'm guessing at the very least I could get like you know a hundred copies printed at a vanity press and my kids and grandkids and and I would just have a good time writing it too.

Angela:

I think that's great. I can't wait to read it so we'll be watching for it. I do need to ask before we go do you have hope for the future with what's happening in the Pentagon and and with journalists and you know everything we've discussed?

Speaker:

I don't have much hope for the very near future because all of the trends are going in the the wrong way. And I but I do think that you know one of the things you learn when you go through when you start looking at the history of our country is that we've been through some really bad times. Yeah yeah and you know I remember when I was in high school and we studied um the Civil War and his American history it kind of the Civil War ended the North won and you know the slaves were freed and everything was uh you know the good guys won. But when you go back and actually look at the history of the post-Civil War period there were just lots of terrible things that were happening you know and the the South might have lost the war but they really kind of took uh power back in the postwar period and did all kinds of terrible things and the country was you know it's never been perfect it's never even been close to perfect and we'll get through this period too I think um will I be around to to s to see the the turnaround I I don't know I'm I'm not really worried about it at this point. There comes a point where you you you do what you can so all we really can do is vote um and then count on what uh Martin Luther King Jr. said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and uh hold on to that.

Angela:

Yes let's do that how can our listeners follow your work or sign up for Daily on Defense? Well you can go to dailyondefense.com and there you can uh it's it's a little tricky but you can uh click on subscribe and subscribe to the newsletter um it's uh free it's and it's worth everything you paid for it as I like to say thank you so much Jamie this has been fascinating my pleasure that's all for this episode of Media and Minutes a podcast by Communications Redefined take a moment to rate review and subscribe to our show we'd love to hear what you think you can find more at communicationsredefined dot com slash podcast I'm your host Angela Tuell talk to you next time