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Prominent U.S. and international media organizations, including The New York Times, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse (AFP), and Fox News, have declined to sign newly imposed Pentagon media rules that they say restrict press freedom. As a result, they will lose their Pentagon press credentials.
The Defense Department’s new regulations follow a series of measures limiting journalist access inside the Pentagon, forcing several outlets to vacate offices in the building, and drastically reducing the number of official press briefings.
The Pentagon Press Association (PPA) said the new media policy “gags Pentagon employees” by threatening retaliation against journalists who seek information not pre-approved for release.
AFP said Tuesday that it “cannot sign up to the terms of the Pentagon document that would require media to acknowledge insufficiently clear new policies that appear to fly in the face of U.S. constitutional principles and of the basic tenets of journalism.”
“We shall continue to cover the Pentagon and the U.S. military freely and fairly, as we have done for decades,” AFP added.
Major U.S. television networks — ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC — issued a joint statement saying they will not sign the new rules, which they said would “restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues.”
Alongside Fox News, conservative outlets such as The Washington Times and Newsmax have also reportedly refused to comply with the policy, which could result in the revocation of around 100 press credentials in total.
The new rules are the latest in a series of restrictions curbing journalists’ access to the Pentagon, the largest U.S. government department, with a budget in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Earlier this year, the Defense Department ordered eight major media organizations — including The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, and NPR — to vacate their dedicated offices in the Pentagon, citing the need to create space for other, predominantly conservative, outlets.
Journalists are now required to be accompanied by official escorts outside designated areas of the Pentagon — another limitation on press freedom. The department has also cut back drastically on briefings, holding only about six this year compared to an average of two or more per week under President Joe Biden’s administration, which left office in January.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — a former Fox News host and Army National Guard veteran — has been a vocal critic of leaks from within the department.
However, earlier this year, Hegseth himself was inadvertently involved in the disclosure of sensitive information when he shared details about planned U.S. strikes against Yemen’s Houthi rebels in a Signal chat group that mistakenly included a journalist.
Hegseth has also reportedly discussed U.S. military operations in Yemen on Signal with his wife and other individuals not authorized to access such information, prompting an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
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