Pentagon Limits Journalists’ Access To Military Information

The US Defense Department is requiring journalists to agree to use only pre-approved information about the military or lose their credentials to cover the Pentagon, the latest Trump administration effort to shape media reporting.

The new rule — part of an updated press credentialing process presented to news organisations this week — came in a memo by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. The memo said that journalists will be required to sign the 10-page form as a condition of receiving and holding a press pass to report on the Defense Department.

Anyone who signs agrees that Pentagon information “must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorising official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”

To justify the new restriction, the Pentagon says it must protect classified national security information as well as anything designated “controlled unclassified information.”

The New York Times issued a statement saying that such restrictions “are at stark odds with the constitutional protections of a free press in a democracy.”

At least one conservative lawmaker complained about the new policy. Republican Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska posted on X that the new press policy is “so dumb” he found it hard to believe.

“We don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the government’s official position,” he said, referring to the Soviet outlet. “A free press makes our country better.”

President Donald Trump’s second-term clashes with the media flared up this week when Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk after a pressure campaign, including threats by Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr.

In April, the White House eliminated long-standing press pool access for newswire services after a federal court ordered the administration to restore credentials for The Associated Press.

That followed a lawsuit by AP when the White House began restricting its White House coverage after the wire service refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the new name Trump gave it, the Gulf of America, a change other countries don’t recognise.

Trump also changed the name of the Defense Department back to its pre-World War II name of the War Department, but the change requires Congress to finalise it.