By Nandita Bose and Gram Slattery
WASHINGTON, April 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he would demand that the journalist who first reported that an airman in Iran had been rescued reveal how they got that information, and threatened to jail them if they refused.
Trump's remarks at a White House press conference represented a significant escalation of the administration's attacks on the press. The president has privately complained to aides in recent weeks that media coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has been too negative, and Trump and his allies have publicly criticized some news organizations' coverage.
After a U.S. fighter jet was shot down over Iran on Friday, several media outlets reported that one of the two airmen onboard had been successfully recovered by U.S. rescue forces.
Trump said the disclosure had threatened the security of the ongoing operation to rescue the second airman, though that airman was eventually successfully recovered.
"We didn't talk about the first one for an hour. Then somebody leaked something, which, we will hopefully find that leaker. We're looking very hard to find that leaker," Trump said.
"We're going to go to the media company that released it, and we're going to say, 'National security, give it up or go to jail.'"
It was not clear which media outlet or reporter Trump was referring to. Several media outlets appeared to report on the rescue of the first airman within a short period of time, including The New York Times, CBS News and Axios.
The White House did not immediately respond when asked which reporter Trump was threatening.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr posted on X last month that broadcasters who air "fake news" now have a chance to "correct course before their license renewals come up." His remarks were accompanied by a screenshot of a Truth Social post from Trump earlier in the day claiming that "Lowlife 'Papers' and Media actually want us to lose the War."
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Gram Slattery; Editing by Andy Sullivan, David Ljunggren and Deepa Babington)
