Throwing Them Out

The Trump administration has repeatedly sought to muzzle national security reporting. It isn’t working.

For CJR’s special issue on access, I put together a timeline showing how the Pentagon has forced journalists out of the building, stripping away the protections necessary for reporters to keep the military in check. Just this week—with the United States at war—the Department of Defense (or Department of War, if you’re Pete Hegseth) declared the Pentagon press office to be a “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility,” or SCIF, and said this was a measure to protect the classified material handled by speechwriters. “As a result, journalists will no longer be permitted to enter the office space,” Joel Valdez, the acting Pentagon press secretary, told the Washington Post.

This heightened level of restriction has been in the making since Hegseth took office—and news outlets have pushed back. Thanks to a lawsuit filed by the New York Times, the Pentagon’s attempts to skirt the First and Fifth Amendments face a serious challenge. And on Wednesday, two members of the advisory board of Stars and Stripes, an independent military newspaper that receives DOD funding, sued the Pentagon, accusing it of violating the First Amendment through its efforts to expand control of the publication to rid it of alleged “woke distractions.” Below, you’ll find some notable moments we’ve pulled from the issue timeline—recent highs and lows of Pentagon reporting.