The U.S. Defense Department will issue new press credentials but remove media offices from the Pentagon after a judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit regarding limits on reporters’ access to the building, a department official announced Monday.
Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the agency disagrees with the ruling and will appeal. U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., last week sided with the newspaper and ruled that
the Pentagon's new policy illegally restricts the press credentials of reporters who walked out of the building rather than agree to the new rules.
Parnell said the reporters will be able to work from an “annex” that will be on the Pentagon grounds but outside the building. He said the new facility “will be available when ready” but did not say how long that would take.
Journalists will still have access to the Pentagon for press conferences and interviews arranged through the department’s public affairs team, but they will have to be escorted, Parnell wrote on X.
The Times sued the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in December, claiming the credentialing policy violates the journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process.
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 on the military.
The AP, meanwhile, is awaiting a decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals on its separate lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration. The AP contends that Trump’s White House team punished it by reducing its access to presidential events because the outlet hasn’t followed his lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.
