Pentagon restrictions on reporters’ access have prompted dozens of journalists to turn in their credentials and leave the building, with media organizations and legal experts warning that the policy may undermine long-standing protections for newsgathering. The changes took effect Oct. 15 after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth introduced a new 21-page access policy that media lawyers argue could punish routine reporting activities.
The new guidelines require reporters to acknowledge that they could be labeled security risks and lose their credentials for soliciting information not approved for release. Multiple large news organizations including The Associated Press, NBC News, Fox News, CNN, Reuters, The Washington Post and The New York Times refused to sign the policy, clearing their workspaces and leaving the Pentagon in the afternoon when the deadline passed.
President Donald Trump supported the restrictions. Trump said he found the press to be “very disruptive in terms of world peace.” Hegseth, a former Fox News host appointed by Trump, has also sharply limited press briefings and reporter movement since taking office.. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell defended the rules in a statement to Reuters, saying the government “stands by our policy” because it is “what’s best for our troops and the national security of this country.”
Reporters who left the Pentagon said the changes cut to the core of their work. “To agree to not solicit information is to agree to not be a journalist,” Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic told AP.
The Pentagon Press Association, which represents 101 reporters from 56 outlets, argued that the new rules would chill both journalists and their sources. The association said registered media access to the Pentagon has existed in some form since the Truman administration.
While journalists have never had unlimited rights to classified or restricted areas, legal scholars say the solicitation ban raises First Amendment concerns. The rules appear to impede protected newsgathering activity recognized by the Supreme Court in Branzburg v. Hayes. By threatening retaliation for seeking non-public information, the policy may not be narrowly tailored to a compelling government interest and therefore could fail constitutional review.
Former Pentagon official Mick Mulroy, now with Harvard’s Belfer Center, said that the military’s credibility depends on transparency in a free society.
As legacy outlets left, the Pentagon announced a “next generation” of press corps members who signed the agreement. More than 60 journalists from outlets including LindellTV, the Gateway Pundit, Human Events, the Post Millennial, the National Pulse and Frontlines were newly credentialed. Parnell posted that these reporters represent “new media” able to “circumvent the lies of the mainstream media.”
Only One America News Network, which frequently supports the Trump administration, immediately signed when the policy was first circulated.
Reporters who lost access said they would continue to cover the U.S. military from outside the building. NPR’s Tom Bowman wrote that without independent questioning inside the Pentagon, Americans may be left with information shaped primarily through social media posts and interviews with partisan commentators. Richard Stevenson, Washington bureau chief for The New York Times, said the public has a right to know how the nearly $1 trillion defense budget is being used.
As legal advocates and press associations assess next steps, the dispute has touched on constitutional issues central to how the United States governs. In one week, the Pentagon revoked the kind of proximity and communication between military leaders and independent reporters that has shaped public understanding of wars, budgets and military accountability for more than 70 years.
Youssef of The Atlantic said she will keep reporting. “Our whole goal is soliciting information,” she told AP News. “The reporting will continue.”
