Journalists exposing government lies are a problem for Trump & co

The UK government is trying to undermine the work of journalists who keep the public informed. Officials are now trying to claim they must tighten Freedom of Information (FOI) rules to defend against China. Meanwhile US president Donald Trump’s administration has publicly attacked independent media outlet Drop Site News for… telling the truth.

The Financial Times reported on 18 March:

British officials are concerned that China is exploiting the UK’s freedom of information legislation to collate unclassified data that risks revealing sensitive information.

The paper added:

Government figures believe they have detected a pattern of requests relating to the UK’s defence and national security, raising suspicions that Beijing may be behind a significant proportion of them, according to people familiar with the matter.

The evidence? One anonymous official’s ‘concerns’:

There’s a growing awareness that FOI is being used by hostile states — and China in particular — specifically in relation to defence matters.

Journalists freedom’s erosion

Yet as the FT itself points out:

The law only requires the government to provide unclassified material in response to FOI requests and numerous exemptions — including on national security grounds — already exist.

On balance this all seems like a fairly thin argument to take away the public’s right to know what governments are up to. You can read the hefty list of exemptions which already exist here. In short, numerous provisions which dramatically limit access to information are already built into the FOI system.

There’s also a cultural issue here. As the Canary has reported, the legacy media and MPs tend to get a bit giddy about intelligence matters. UK NGO Drone Wars was less impressed, calling the move “utter nonsense”:

And by attacking FoI law in this way, yet more evidence of how far MoD/government willing to go to avoid oversight and accountability in this area.

‘America Last’ reporting?

US investigative outlet Drop Site News drew fire from the Trump administration on 17 March. They’d reported that US attempts to negotiate with Iran had been met with stony silence. It hurts to get ghosted.

In response to this report today, the White House denounced @DropSiteNews as "abhorrent," and accused us of engaging in "America Last behavior."

Thank you for your attention to this matter!https://t.co/RYkAo872gH

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) March 16, 2026

A White House spokesperson subsequently launched into a bizarre public rant about Drop Site:

The radical, left-wing Drop Site News is clearly carrying water for the Iranian terrorist regime – and reports like these based on pure fiction and citing unnamed anonymous sources should be discarded immediately.

Adding:

Iran feeds this fake news media outlet propaganda and they publish it as fact, which is abhorrent, America Last behavior. Operation Epic Fury will continue unabated until President Trump, as Commander-in-Chief, determines that the goals of Operation Epic Fury, including for Iran to no longer pose a military threat, have been fully realized.

Drop Site is one of few outlets that has consistently interviewed the Iranian leadership and Hamas. In a livestream discussion on 17 March, Drop Site reporter Ryan Grim said:

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything quite like this.

Drop Site’s Jeremy Scahill described the attack as a:

paragraph that read like it was literally from Trump’s Truth Social, except it didn’t include all caps

UK and US governments want to stop journalists informing the public on issues like Iran. Through threats, slander and by limiting FOI, they clearly intend to keep the public in the dark in these dangerous times. Simply put, they really, really don’t like the sunlight – preferring to keep their citizens permanently in the dark.

Featured image via the Canary