Judge reverses Pentagon restrictions on press coverage
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman has ruled as unconstitutional the new press policy limiting the access of journalists to the Pentagon, opining that the rules violate the First Amendment protection enjoyed by reporters.
“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” Mr Friedman said in his ruling on Friday.
The Department of Defence under Pete Hegseth in 2025 slammed restrictions on journalists and directed them to sign an agreement that newspapers will not publish unauthorised information.
Per the press policy, the Department also reserved the right to revoke the access of journalists who solicited information about military operations from officers and published reports that had not been previously cleared.
The agreement angered newspapers such as The New York Times who deemed the new policy as censorship. Reporters from The Times, Fox News and others declined to sign the document and consequently, surrendered their press passes.
The Times and reporter Julian E Barnes sued Mr Hegseth, the Department and its spokesperson Sean Parnell at the district court in Columbia where the judge sided with the plaintiffs on Friday.
“Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech. It must not be abandoned now,” he said.
“It is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing,” Friedman said.
The Pentagon disagreed with the ruling and announced plans to appeal the decision.
“We disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal,” DOD spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement on Friday.
A spokesperson for The Times hailed the ruling, saying it “reaffirms the right of the Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public’s behalf.”
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