Reporters take sides on Pentagon press rules

Reporters from more than two dozen news outlets packed up their desks at the Pentagon and surrendered their press credentials on Tuesday and Wednesday. Some carried world maps out to their cars. Others took one last selfie outside the Defense Department sign. They will continue reporting on the U.S. military and national security, but no longer from the halls of the Pentagon: War Secretary Pete Hegseth imposed new press policies this month that many journalists were unwilling to sign.

“Today, the Defense Department confiscated the badges of the Pentagon reporters from virtually every major media organization in America,” the Pentagon Press Association wrote in a statement Wednesday. “Today … is a dark day for press freedom that raises concerns about a weakening U.S. commitment to transparency in governance, to public accountability at the Pentagon and to free speech for all.”

Hegseth has praised the policies as common sense. “Pentagon access is a privilege, not a right,” he wrote in a Tuesday post on X. “So, here is [Department of War] press credentialing FOR DUMMIES: Press no longer roams free. Press must wear visible badge. Credentialed press no longer permitted to solicit criminal acts.”

On Oct. 6, the Pentagon announced it would overhaul the credentialing procedure, requiring new press passes for all reporters. Consistent with previous years, reporters must undergo a background check, agree to office safety rules, pass through a metal detector upon arrival, wear a press badge at all times, and remain in approved areas. But the new rules also require reporters to promise not to pursue leaks from Pentagon personnel or risk litigation.

“Any solicitation of DoW personnel to commit criminal acts would not be considered protected activity under the 1st Amendment,” the policy reads. It says unauthorized disclosure could pose a security risk, and if a reporter is deemed to be a security risk, his or her pass could be revoked. The policy additionally characterizes reporting leaked information, even if it’s unclassified, as soliciting a criminal act.

“To ensure the safety of U.S. personnel,” the policy reads, “news media who find themselves in possession of information that appears to be [classified national security information] or [controlled unclassified information] should discuss those materials with the [Pentagon Press Operations] prior to publication.”

The new rules have prompted more than 30 American news outlets, including conservative organizations like Newsmax and The Daily Caller, to hand in their badges. But news outlets and free speech advocates say the new policy is unconstitutional. And longtime Pentagon reporters and military personnel say the secretary’s characterizations of press access up to this point are not true.

“The phrase ‘soliciting leaks’ really is a sort of code word for normal reporting,” retired Associated Press reporter and Pentagon Press Association President Robert Burns told me. “Part of the whole idea of American democracy is that the government must be accountable to the public. And therefore, there should be an independent media that can keep watch on government agencies, government officials, government actions, government budgets, and so forth.”

The Department of Defense, also referred to as the Department of War, employs more than 770,000 civilians aside from the 1.3 million active duty service members. It also takes up roughly 13% of the federal budget, at nearly $900 billion.

The Pentagon has not always allowed reporters full access. During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship, which limited what reporters could publish about troop movements. The Pentagon didn’t regularly allow a pool of reporters to follow troops until 1984, during the Reagan administration.

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Defense Department personnel are prohibited from disclosing unauthorized information, classified or not. Thus, most outlets grant anonymity to military members who leak information.

Still, press advocates argue news organizations should be allowed to publish leaked information that serves the national interest as long as it does not endanger soldiers’ lives. As the argument goes, such press freedoms keep the government accountable to the American people.

“It’s a violation of or an undermining of First Amendment rights,” Burns said of the Pentagon’s new media policy. “It also limits the amount of information that the American public will have about the military.”

After the Pentagon Press Association and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press met with Pentagon press officials, the Defense Department released a new version of the rules, clarifying that department personnel, not reporters, must seek authorization to share information. But it kept a line stating that seeking leaks from personnel “would not be protected activity under the 1st Amendment.”

Hegseth’s crackdown on the press started in February. A department memo informed several large outlets—including The New York Times, NPR, and Politico—that they had to rotate out of their Pentagon workspaces to make room for the New York Post, Breitbart, One America News Network, and HuffPost. After the Pentagon Press Association complained, four more outlets lost their desks. Beginning that same month, reporters were barred from the press briefing room. In May, Hegseth ordered that journalists may not walk down most hallways without an official escort.

After the Pentagon inspector general launched an investigation into Hegseth’s use of Signal, an unsecured texting app, to discuss sensitive or classified information, the Pentagon stopped holding press briefings. Instead, press secretary Kingsley Wilson has been posting weekly video updates summarizing Pentagon accomplishments, a practice similar to many other federal agencies.

Pepperdine University communications and religion professor Christina Littlefield says it’s a worrying trend when the government seeks to bypass the media entirely.

“What I worry about happening across the way the Trump administration is operating and the way the press are responding is where a lot of Americans are not going to know what’s true anymore,” Littlefield said. She added that the administration appears to be trying to crack down on “negative coverage.”

During a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Hegseth noted that the Pentagon press corps were with him over a weekend visit to the Middle East, where President Donald Trump on Monday signed a historic peace deal between Israel and Hamas.

“You would think that the Pentagon press corps would be front and center across the board on wanting to give credit to the president for forging this kind of peace, and instead what they want to talk about is a policy about them,” Hegseth said.

The policy maintains longstanding procedure that reporters must wear badges that identify them as press at all times. It also reiterates that reporters do not have access to the entire building. Reporters and military members alike have complained that the secretary’s comments ignore how this has already been policy for decades. Burns said he was often invited into the offices of top military officials, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, for on- and off-the-record conversations.

“The entire Pentagon is not a classified information building,” former public affairs officer David Lapan told me. “There are public tours, there are plenty of places and offices that don’t contain classified information. It isn’t this giant safe that nobody can come into. We allow the public in there, we allow individuals from foreign countries that are visiting foreign dignitaries and others. They of course aren’t given access to areas that are restricted.”

Lapan served in several public affairs roles in the Pentagon for 20 years, including during the 9/11 attacks and the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He held daily press gaggles in his office for reporters.

“It was my obligation to protect classified information and not to divulge it to people,” he said. “It didn’t stop reporters from asking, of course, because one, it’s their job, two, they don’t know what’s classified and what’s not. It’s up to me, or others who held security clearances, to not divulge things that were classified.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has several times held journalists not liable for releasing classified information, even in situations that threaten national security. In the landmark 1971 case New York Times Co. v. United States, the court noted there is a heavy presumption against the constitutionality of “prior restraint,” or when the government suppresses information to prevent its publication. At the time, The New York Times and The Washington Post were defending their decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, classified documents about how the United States waged the Vietnam War. Two centuries earlier, the British Empire used prior restraint to censor publications before the Revolutionary War.

“That was something that we threw off with our First Amendment in the United States as part of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution,” Littlefield said. “[The press are] just being told, ‘No, you can’t print anything unless we say so.’ Which would make them stenographers just repeating the press releases. What is the point of the press in that situation?”

So far, One America News, The Epoch Times, and The Federalist, all conservative outlets, have indicated they will comply with the new policy. In a statement for The Federalist, editor in chief Mollie Hemingway called outlets refusing it “corrupt corporate journalists.” She pointed to lines in the new policy that confirm reporters are not required to submit their articles for approval.

“You’ll have to forgive our skepticism of corporate media’s ostensible new love of press freedoms and the First Amendment,” Hemingway wrote. “We found zero new restrictions on the ability of journalists to report on or criticize the government. … If the new guidelines result in fewer professional con artists and media hoaxers roaming the halls looking for new lies to peddle, so be it.”

The approach of punishing reporters rather than the leakers themselves is legally dicey, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The First Amendment has several exceptions for protected speech, but asking questions that lead to a classified answer is not included, the free-speech advocacy group noted.

“The policy’s interpretation of solicitation or encouragement seems to invest a lot of discretion into the Department of War to decide whether the question was soliciting sensitive information,” Adam Goldstein wrote for FIRE. “And it also sets up reporters to be scapegoats for when federal employees release too much information. The fault there starts—and ends—with those employees, not journalists simply doing their job.”

In May, Gabrielle Cuccia, a Pentagon reporter for One America News Network, wrote in a personal Substack post that Hegseth’s treatment of the press violated conservative values.

“The power of the [Make America Great Again] movement came from a shared realization: we weren’t going to blindly accept our government as Bible anymore,” Cuccia wrote after Hegseth closed the briefing room and implemented the escort rule. “Let’s be honest—since January, the real leaks from the Pentagon haven’t come from the press. They’ve come from Hegseth’s own team and other senior officials.”

Three days later, Cuccia’s network fired her. Her replacement, Alexandra Ingersoll, is now one of 15 reporters with a Pentagon credential under the new policy.