{"id":170079,"date":"2026-03-21T04:45:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T04:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/170079\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T04:45:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T04:45:22","slug":"judge-sides-with-nyt-against-policy-limiting-reporters-pentagon-access","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/170079\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge sides with NYT against policy limiting reporters\u2019 Pentagon access"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge agreed Friday<\/a> to block the Trump administration from enforcing a policy limiting news reporters\u2019 access to the Pentagon, agreeing with The New York Times that key portions of the new rules are unlawful.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., sided with the newspaper and ruled that the Pentagon policy illegally restricts the press credentials of reporters who walked out<\/a> of the building rather than agree to the new rules.<\/p>\n

The Times sued the Pentagon<\/a> and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in December, claiming the credentialing policy violates the journalists\u2019 constitutional rights to free speech and due process. <\/p>\n

The current Pentagon press corps is comprised mostly of conservative outlets that agreed to the policy. Reporters from outlets that refused to consent to the new rules, including from The Associated Press, have continued reporting<\/a> on the military.<\/p>\n

The Defense Department has been letting some of the legacy media reporters that didn\u2019t agree to the restrictions back in the Pentagon for some of Hegseth\u2019s Iran war briefings. Hegseth rarely calls on them, although he did recently take questions from reporters like Eric Schmitt of The Times and Luis Martinez of ABC.<\/p>\n

Friedman, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Bill Clinton, said the policy \u201cfails to provide fair notice of what routine, lawful journalistic practices will result in the denial, suspension, or revocation\u201d of Pentagon press credentials. He ruled that it violates the First and Fifth amendment rights to free speech and due process. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation\u2019s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. That principle has preserved the nation\u2019s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell posted late Friday on X, \u201cWe disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Times lauds ruling as boon for press freedom<\/p>\n

New York Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander said the newspaper believes the ruling \u201cenforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars,\u201d Stadtlander said in a statement. \u201cToday\u2019s ruling reaffirms the right of The Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public\u2019s behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theodore Boutrous, an attorney who represented The Times at a hearing earlier this month, said in a statement that the court ruling is \u201ca powerful rejection of the Pentagon\u2019s effort to impede freedom of the press and the reporting of vital information to the American people during a time of war.\u201d<\/p>\n

The judge ordered the Pentagon<\/a> to reinstate the press credentials of seven Times journalists. He also said his decision to vacate the challenged policy terms applies to \u201call regulated parties.\u201d <\/p>\n

Noting that part of the ruling, the Pentagon Press Association \u2014 which includes AP reporters \u2014 called for the immediate reinstatement of the credentials of all its members.<\/p>\n

The PPA released a statement saying: \u201cThis is a great day for freedom of the press in the United States. It is also hopefully a learning opportunity for Pentagon leadership, which took extreme steps to limit press access to information in wartime.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Defense Departmant has argued that the policy imposes \u201ccommon sense\u201d rules that protect the military from the disclosure of national security information.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of that process is to prevent those who pose a security risk from having broad access to American military headquarters,\u201d government attorneys wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Times attorneys claim the policy is designed to silence unfavorable press coverage of President Donald Trump\u2019s administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe First Amendment flatly prohibits the government from granting itself the unbridled power to restrict speech because the mere existence of such arbitrary authority can lead to self-censorship,\u201d they wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Judge finds Pentagon tried to weed out \u2018disfavored\u2019 journalists<\/p>\n

The judge said he recognizes that \u201cnational security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut especially in light of the country\u2019s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing \u2014 so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election,\u201d Friedman wrote.<\/p>\n

Friedman said the \u201cundisputed evidence\u201d shows that the policy is designed to weed out \u201cdisfavored journalists\u201d and replace them with those who are \u201con board and willing to serve\u201d the government, a clear instance of illegal viewpoint discrimination.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn sum, the Policy on its face makes any newsgathering and reporting not blessed by the Department a potential basis for the denial, suspension, or revocation of a journalist\u2019s (credentials),\u201d he wrote. \u201cIt provides no way for journalists to know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials.\u201d <\/p>\n

Pentagon must update judge in a week<\/p>\n

The Pentagon had asked the judge to suspend his ruling for a week for an appeal. Friedman refused. He gave the Pentagon a week to file a written report on its compliance with the order.<\/p>\n

The Times argued that the Pentagon has applied its own rules inconsistently. The newspaper noted that Trump ally Laura Loomer<\/a>, a right-wing personality who agreed to the Pentagon policy, appeared to violate the Pentagon\u2019s prohibition on soliciting unauthorized information by promoting her \u201ctip line.\u201d The government didn\u2019t object to Loomer\u2019s tip line but concluded that a Washington Post tip line does violate its policy because it purportedly \u201ctargets\u201d military personnel and department employees.<\/p>\n

The judge said he doesn\u2019t see any meaningful difference between the two tip lines.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the problem is that nothing in the Policy explicitly prevents the Department from treating these two nearly identical tip lines differently,\u201d Friedman added.<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin in Washington and David Bauder in New York contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge agreed Friday to block the Trump administration from enforcing a policy limiting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2571,10049,10812,24027,153,157,69645,417,1073,14670,69646,69644,1075,9,24,11,10,69642,1351,87,1350,69643,1352,420],"class_list":["post-170079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-arts-and-entertainment","tag-bill-clinton","tag-charlie-stadtlander","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-schmitt","tag-general-news","tag-government-policy","tag-iran","tag-laura-loomer","tag-luis-martinez","tag-military-and-defense","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-paul-ben-victor","tag-pete-hegseth","tag-politics","tag-sean-parnell","tag-theodore-boutrous","tag-u-s-department-of-defense","tag-washington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}