Thursday, 16 October 2025
Thursday, 16 October 2025
Dozens of reporters exited the Pentagon on Wednesday rather than agree to restrictions on their work imposed by US President Donald Trump ’s administration.
Photographs of the scene showed career Pentagon journalists, some of whom have worked in the building for decades, carrying their personal belongings away.
“Today, the Defense Department confiscated the badges of the Pentagon reporters from virtually every major media organization in America,” said the Pentagon Press Association in a statement.
“It did this because reporters would not sign onto a new media policy over its implicit threat of criminalizing national security reporting and exposing those who sign it to potential prosecution.”
The association added, “The Pentagon Press Association’s members are still committed to reporting on the US military. But make no mistake, today, Oct. 15, 2025, is a dark day for press freedom that raises concerns about a weakening US commitment to transparency in governance, to public accountability at the Pentagon and to free speech for all.”
At least 30 news organisations declined to sign a new Pentagon access policy for journalists, warning of the potential for less comprehensive coverage of the world's most powerful military.
The policy requires journalists to acknowledge new rules on press access, including that they could be branded security risks and have their Pentagon press badges revoked if they ask department employees to disclose classified and some types of unclassified information.
All five major broadcast networks issued a joint statement on Tuesday, saying: "Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon's new requirements, which would restrict journalists' ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues. The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the US military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press."
The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief Richard Stevenson said in a statement on Friday: "Since the policy was first announced, we have expressed concerns that it constrains how journalists can report on the US military, which is funded by nearly $1 trillion in taxpayer money annually. The public has a right to know how the government and military are operating."
News outlets that have announced their refusal to accept the new press access rules in statements or their own news stories are: the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR, Axios, Politico, The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Hill, Newsmax, Breaking Defense and Task & Purpose.
Only one media outlet, One America News Network, has signed on to the policy.
Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on Monday: "The policy does not ask for them to agree, just to acknowledge that they understand what our policy is. This has caused reporters to have a full blown meltdown, crying victim online. We stand by our policy because it's what's best for our troops and the national security of this country."
President Trump, asked about the new policy on Tuesday, told reporters that Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth "finds the press to be very disruptive in terms of world peace and maybe security for our nation”.
Hegseth called the requirements "common sense," adding that "we're trying to make sure national security is respected."
Hegseth on Monday, while traveling 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.
The Pentagon has been the subject of numerous leaks in recent months. The most famous of these was the leak of the infamous group chat on Signal featuring Hegseth discussing military strikes in Yemen, which occurred when Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist for The Atlantic, was inexplicably added to it.
