Nearly the entire Pentagon press corps will lose access to the U.S. military’s headquarters Wednesday after refusing to sign onto a new media policy that reporters and editors say violates their First Amendment rights.
Accredited Pentagon reporters had until Tuesday evening to sign what had been called a “pledge” to follow the new rules, which included limiting where reporters could go within the building and language that appeared to threaten removing access if reporters asked for information not already pre-approved for release.
Dozens of outlets, including the New York Times, PBS, NPR, The Associated Press, Reuters and conservative outlets like Newsmax and Fox News — the former employer of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — released statements on Monday and Tuesday saying they would not sign on.
“The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections,” a joint statement from Fox News, CNN, ABC News, NBC News and CBS News said Tuesday.
Only One America News Network, a small outlet staunchly loyal to U.S. President Donald Trump, had signed the pledge as of Tuesday’s 5 p.m. eastern deadline.
Here’s what to know about the controversial policy, and what it could mean for future reporting on the world’s largest military.
What is the Pentagon asking for?
The new rules say credentialed journalists won’t be able to access most areas of the Pentagon without an escort and a visible press badge.
The 17-page directive distributed last month also said journalists would only be granted access to information that is “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell has said the rules, which were tweaked after negotiations with news organizations, establish “common sense media procedures.” The Pentagon now says journalists won’t be blocked from reporting news or have to “clear stories” for publication.
However, the new policy still says journalists who encourage Pentagon officials to break the rules — in other words, ask sources for information — could be subject to losing their building access.
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Hegseth has been on a mission to clamp down on leaks from within the department after recent news stories have contradicted official statements from the Pentagon and Trump, or cast them in an embarrassing light.
Reports on an early defence intelligence assessment of the U.S. military’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, which claimed they did minimal damage, angered Trump and Hegseth, who had insisted the sites were “obliterated.”
The Pentagon press team had already evicted some news outlets from their regular workspaces in favour of friendlier outlets and limited the ability of reporters to roam around the Pentagon. Hegseth and Parnell seldom hold press briefings and have spoken of using polygraph tests to find and expel “leakers.”
Hegseth claimed Tuesday during an unrelated event alongside Trump that Pentagon reporters had been roaming “anywhere (they) want” without identifiable press badges and seeking classified information.
“It used to be, Mr. President, that the press could go pretty much anywhere in the Pentagon — the most classified area in the world,” he said. “It’s common sense stuff, Mr. President. We’re trying to make sure national security is respected, and we’re proud of the policy.”
Trump himself said that “it bothers me to have soldiers and even high-ranking generals walking around with you guys (reporters) on their sleeve asking — because they can make a mistake, and a mistake can be tragic.”
Asked last month if the Pentagon should decide what reporters can cover, Trump replied, “No, I don’t think so. Listen, nothing stops reporters. You know that.”
What news organizations say
The Pentagon Press Association said Monday that reporters have always worn press badges and have “always been limited to unclassified spaces — the same spaces that coffee shop employees, cleaning crews, and others with no security clearance are able to traverse daily,” and that “longstanding press access rules posed no national security threat.”
The group says the policy could potentially expose reporters who ask Pentagon officials for information to prosecution, in addition to having their credentials revoked.
“There is no need or justification … to require reports to affirm their understanding of vague, likely unconstitutional policies as a precondition to reporting from Pentagon facilities,” it said in a statement.
It added that signing the statement amounts to admitting that reporting any information that hasn’t been government-approved is harming national security — “something everyone involved knows to be untrue.”
Leading U.S. media outlets issued statements on Monday and Tuesday saying they will not sign the required letter acknowledging an “understanding” of the new rules.
In an op-ed article Tuesday, NPR Pentagon reporter Tom Bowman said the policy “prevents us from doing our job” and that he would turn in his press pass instead.
He explained that having the ability to ask Pentagon officials questions allowed him to report crucial information to the American public that contradicted official government messaging, including military doubts about “success” in Iraq following the 2003 fall of Baghdad. He also cited stories that exposed Obama administration failures during the war in Afghanistan.
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic — and the reporter at the centre of the “Signalgate” controversy involving Hegseth and an unsecured Signal text chain about strikes in Yemen earlier this year — said the new requirements “violate our First Amendment rights, and the rights of Americans who seek to know how taxpayer-funded military resources and personnel are being deployed.”
Several of the media statements disavowing the policy, including from the New York Times, have noted that the U.S. military budget is nearly US$1 trillion.
Hegseth on Monday, while travelling with Trump to Israel and Egypt, responded on social media platform X to news organizations declining to agree to the policy by posting a hand-waving emoji, implying he was bidding them goodbye.
In addition to leading U.S. broadcasters and media organizations, foreign outlets, including Al Jazeera and the Guardian, as well as military-focused outlets like the Military Times, have also refused to sign.
Washington Times reporter Mike Glenn posted photos on X showing an Amnesty International graphic reading “Journalism Is Not A Crime” on the door to the Pentagon press corridor.
