The Pentagon Doubles Down on Muzzling Reporters

Last month, the Department of Defense issued a memo to reporters imposing an unprecedented set of restrictions on covering the Pentagon and setting a deadline for members of the press to sign a pledge of compliance. Since then, news organizations have pushed back. The Pentagon Press Association, a group representing journalists who work in the building, has met with the press office, as did the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Some considered bringing a legal challenge to the policy. As the deadline for signatures neared—and no one, it seemed, was willing to submit to the terms—the Pentagon issued a revised version of the document. But reporters quickly determined that it wasn’t much of an improvement. “I think we’ll all be out of the building within weeks,” a member of the press corps told me.

Since Monday evening, when the revised policy was released, Pentagon reporters have been trying to make sense of what it means, exactly—and conferring with one another about their shared unease with the vagueness in the language, which they fear could leave them vulnerable not only to having their credentials revoked, but also to facing legal repercussions. Soliciting information from Pentagon personnel “would not be considered protected activity under the 1st Amendment,” according to the document, and members of the news media “who find themselves in possession of information” that appears to be unsanctioned—whether that’s “classified national security information” or “controlled unclassified” documents—are expected to “discuss those materials” with the Pentagon press office ahead of publication. But it’s unclear precisely what that would entail. “It’s standard practice by us and any other news organization to get a Pentagon statement when we’re going to report something,” an editor of a DC-based military publication told me. “We would always discuss, I guess, in one sense of the word. But it looks like they want to have a discussion like, ‘Okay, talk about it with us before you publish it so that we can tell you not to publish it.’” The deadline to sign on to the rules is next Tuesday.