President Donald Trump has long referred to certain news organizations as “enemies of the people.” Governments are particularly sensitive to information reported by the press about the military.
Precedents against prior restraints
Indeed, the Supreme Court, which has ruled most notably in Near v. Minnesota (1931) and New York Times v. United States (1971) (the Pentagon Papers Case) that the First Amendment bars government from preventing publishers from publishing (prior restraint), has sometimes included an exception for information that would reveal the location of U.S. troops or sailing dates for warships.
New Pentagon restrictions under Trump
In 2025, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced new restraints on journalists who cover the Pentagon. These included restricted access to certain Pentagon offices and other spaces and a requirement that they be escorted to others (Memorandum of May 23, 2025).
Hegseth also asked journalists to affirm that they will not gather information that the department has not explicitly authorized them to access. If they did not sign the policy, they would lose their press credentials to enter the Pentagon (Nover 2025).
News organizations refuse to sign pledge
Prominent news organizations have pushed back against these guidelines as restrictions on First Amendment press freedoms. Fox News, which usually supports the Trump Administration, joined other news networks that objected.
Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic observed that “The requirements violate our First Amendment rights, and the rights of Americans who seek to know how taxpayer-funded military resources and personnel are being deployed” (Fischer 2025).
Richard Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, similarly said that its journalists “will not sign the Pentagon’s revised press policy, which threatens to punish them for ordinary news gathering protected by the First Amendment” (Fischer 2025). Other organizations that have refused to comply with the new policy include the Associated Press, and Reuters (Bauder 2025).
By contrast, One America News Network’s president Charles Herring, who supports Trump, has signed the policy (Wemple 2025).
Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, has defended the policy as establishing “common sense media procedures.”
“The policy does not ask for them to agree, just to acknowledge what our policy is,” Parnell said. “This has caused reporters to have a full blown meltdown, crying victim online. We stand by our policy because it’s what’s best for our troops and the national security of this country.” (Bauder 2025)
On Oct. 15, 2025, numerous journalists with Pentagon access handed in their press passes and left the building in a show of unity.
The regulations may well backfire as there are plenty of other ways for journalists to gather information about military affairs than by reporting from the Pentagon.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.