On October 15, 2025, the corridors of the Pentagon echoed with the sound of rolling suitcases and hurried footsteps—not from military personnel, but from journalists. More than 30 major news organizations, including The Associated Press, The New York Times, and CNN, vacated their Pentagon workspaces en masse, refusing to sign a new media access policy issued by the Department of Defense. The move, which many view as a watershed moment in the relationship between the press and the military, comes after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, appointed in January 2025, introduced sweeping restrictions on media access and newsgathering at the world’s largest office building.
The revised policy, dated October 6, 2025, requires all credentialed journalists to formally acknowledge that soliciting any unauthorized information—classified or not—could lead to the loss of their credentials and even prosecution. The rules, which build on earlier restrictions from May 2025 that had already limited unescorted press access to large sections of the Pentagon, have been widely condemned as a direct assault on press freedoms.
Defense Secretary Hegseth, defending the changes during a Fox News appearance on October 5, 2025, was characteristically blunt: “The Pentagon press corps can squeal all they want, we’re taking these things seriously. They can report, they just need to make sure they’re following rules.” Yet, as The Washington Post and The Independent reported, the new rules were a step too far for most veteran reporters. By Wednesday afternoon, the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center press area was all but deserted, with only a handful of freelancers, foreign correspondents, and staff from MAGA-aligned outlets remaining.
The Pentagon Press Association, which represents around 100 journalists from 57 domestic and international outlets, advised its members against signing the policy. David Schulz, the association’s legal counsel and director of Yale University’s Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic, minced no words: “What they call solicitation, we call newsgathering. That’s something that’s protected by the Constitution, and reporters have to be able to gather information, ask questions, seek out the news, if we’re to have a free press, which is exactly what the First Amendment guarantees to us.”
Echoing these concerns, former CIA Director Leon Panetta called the policy a “clear violation of the Constitution” during a CNN interview on October 14, 2025. Panetta argued that the new rules would spoon-feed the public only what the Pentagon wished to reveal, rather than allowing journalists to scrutinize government actions independently.
The backlash wasn’t limited to left-leaning or centrist outlets. In a rare show of unity, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, and Fox News issued a joint statement: “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.” Newsmax, another network generally supportive of the Trump administration, also refused to sign, calling the requirements “unnecessary and onerous.”
Specialized defense publications—like Aviation Week, Breaking Defense, Defense News, Military Times, and USNI News—issued their own collective refusal on October 15, 2025. Their statement read: “The Pentagon has been seeking to impose unprecedented restrictions on journalists’ ability to cover the military for several months. Having restricted where unescorted media may go in the Pentagon… department leaders are asking reporters to sign a document acknowledging a vague new policy that, on its face, appears to contravene the First Amendment. This policy threatens to punish reporters who ask legitimate questions in the course of their daily work and to impose material harm on our news organizations for factual reporting.”
Only 15 individuals, according to an internal government document obtained by The Washington Post, agreed to sign the new press pledge. Of these, two were from One America News Network (OAN), one from The Federalist, and another from The Epoch Times—all outlets with reputations for supporting the Trump administration. The rest included freelancers for foreign-based organizations and a smattering of little-known independent sites, some of which publish exclusively on social media. Notably, two members of the Jordanian TV network Al Taghier signed an older version of the policy.
OAN president Charles Herring defended his network’s decision, stating, “after a thorough review of the revised press policy by our attorney, OAN staff has signed the document.” Meanwhile, Kristina Anderson of AWPS News, a social media-centric outlet, shared her mixed feelings: “I feel a profound sense of loss as I walk the Pentagon’s Correspondent spaces today.”
Others, like The Federalist CEO Sean Davis and editor-in-chief Mollie Hemingway, used the moment to criticize both the media establishment and the government. In a statement on X, they claimed to see “zero new restrictions” for journalists, but also accused mainstream outlets of hypocrisy for not defending their First Amendment rights in previous years.
The chilling effect of the policy is already being felt. Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic explained, “To agree to not solicit information is to agree to not be a journalist. Our whole goal is soliciting information.” PBS NewsHour, one of the first outlets to publicly reject the policy, highlighted its broader threat, with Schulz stating, “The obvious intent here is to intimidate and chill reporting on anything that’s not officially disclosed.”
Legal scholars and First Amendment advocates are sounding the alarm. Kevin Goldberg of the Freedom Forum pointed out, “We’re not talking about information that violates the law here, and reporters have the right to ask questions and request information… about unclassified information.” Clay Calvert, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, added, “If you can control access to information, you can control journalism.”
The policy’s vagueness—labeling seekers as “security risks” on a case-by-case basis—raises the specter of arbitrary enforcement. Law professor Jonathan Turley warned on Fox News, “What they’re basically saying is if you publish anything that’s not in the press release… you could be held responsible under this policy. That is going to create a stranglehold on the free press, and the cost is too great.”
Historically, Pentagon-media relations have balanced security with openness. During World War II, embedded reporters chronicled D-Day without signing away their rights. In the Vietnam era, persistent questioning exposed body counts and strategic flaws. The new policy, critics argue, reverses this ethos at a time when U.S. forces are active in 80 countries and military decisions affect millions of Americans.
The ripple effects are felt far beyond Washington. In Southern Maryland, home to key military installations like Naval Air Station Patuxent River and 18,000 defense workers, local journalism relies on national reporting to inform the community about base expansions, veteran services, and federal contracts. The Southern Maryland Chronicle, a regional outlet, depends on wire service insights to cover how defense policies influence everything from crab harvests to school funding. The Chronicle and similar outlets worry that restricted access at the national level could mean less transparency about issues that hit close to home.
As the Pentagon prepares to announce its “next generation” of credentialed reporters—most of them freelancers, foreign correspondents, or staff from ideologically aligned outlets—the American press faces a defining test. Legal challenges are expected, with courts seen as the last line of defense for constitutional guarantees. As David Schulz put it, “The courts are still open to hold officials to account when they exceed their constitutional authority.”
For now, the Pentagon’s press rooms stand nearly empty, a stark reminder that the cost of restricting the free flow of information is measured not just in column inches, but in the public’s right to know.
