Priya Sridhar
Role at the time: Correspondent for MS NOW, on Deadline: White House
Statement summary
Asked on MS NOW whether Hegseth's focus on grooming and weight registers with military families, correspondent Priya Sridhar said it was a question of priorities and reported that serving members she had spoken to felt they were being treated as props.
“I can tell you from talking to service members who are currently in right now that the way they really feel right now is that they are being treated as props.”
The outlet's own upload of the broadcast segment. The quoted wording is our transcription of the video audio. Speaker attribution rests on the panel roster in the video description and on points in the exchange where Wallace addresses a panellist by name immediately before their answer. Paul Rieckhoff also speaks in the segment but his contributions could not be attributed with confidence from audio alone and are not recorded.
Why we used this label
Sridhar frames the criteria as misplaced priorities and relays that those subject to them experience the exercise as instrumental, which is a rejection of the conduct. The closest competing label is a finding that this is not a position event, since she is reporting what sources told her rather than stating her own view. That loses because she introduces the reporting with her own judgment that it is a question of priorities, which supplies an attributable evaluation.