The New York Times on Thursday sued the Pentagon over a new set of press access rules, imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that has resulted in the exit of the veteran credentialed press corps from the complex.
In its lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in D.C., the Times calls the restrictions “exactly the type of speech- and press-restrictive scheme” that the Supreme Court has recognized violates the First Amendment.
The policy “seeks to restrict journalists ‘ ability to do what journalists have always done—ask questions of government employees and gather information to report stories that take the public beyond official pronouncements,” the lawsuit stated.
News organizations, from the Times to CNN to Newsmax, refused to sign on to the new Pentagon policy, with many concluding that it restricted their reporting to official Defense Department announcements or they risked losing their credentials to access the complex. The remaining press corps and new reporters at the Pentagon are now made up of a number of outlets on the right and that have been supportive of the administration, including One America News Network.
“Specifically, the policy confers on Pentagon officials the unfettered discretion to determine that a journalist ‘pose[s] a security or safety risk to [Department] personnel or property,’ … based solely on a journalist’s or news organization’s receipt, publication, or ‘solicitation’ of any ‘unauthorized’ information, regardless of secrecy classification,” the Times’ attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit contends that the policy gives Pentagon officials the power to suspend or revoke reporters’ credentials “for publishing stories that Pentagon leadership may perceive as unfavorable or unflattering, in direct contravention of Supreme Court precedent.”
Even without Pentagon access, reporters have continued to publish hard hitting stories on Hegseth’s tenure. On Friday, The Washington Post last week reported on a second strike in September on a Venezuelan boat struck by U.S. aircraft for ferrying drugs, killing two remaining survivors. The second strike, which the Post reported was ordered by Hegseth, has drawn a furor, as military law experts have said that such attack on defenseless survivors would constitute]\ a war crime. Hegseth has said that it was Admiral Frank Bradley who ordered the strike, although he supported it.
Hegseth and the chief Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, also are named as defendants in the lawsuit. The Times claims that the new policy violates the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Constitution, and the outlet is seeking an injunction prohibiting the Pentagon from enforcing the policy.
A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said in a statement, “The Pentagon’s press access policy is unlawful because it gives government officials unchecked power over who gets a credential and who doesn’t, something the First Amendment prohibits. The public needs independent journalism and the reporters who deliver it back in the Pentagon at a time of heightened scrutiny of the Department’s actions.”
The Times is one of a handful of outlets to challenge the Trump administration as it targets the news media. The Associated Press sued White House officials in February after they banned their journalists from the press pool and access to areas like the Oval Office and East Room. A district court judge found that the ban violated the First Amendment’s it was a punishment because the news service refused to adopt “Gulf of America” as the new name for the “Gulf of Mexico.” An appellate court heard oral arguments last month as it considered the administration’s appeal.
