NPR

10/14/2025

Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for “soliciting” even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable.

No reputable news organization signed the new rule — not mainstream outlets like NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, and The New York Times, nor the conservative Washington Times or the right-wing Newsmax, run by a noted ally of President Trump. Some 100 resident Pentagon press will be barred from the building if they don’t sign by the end of business on Tuesday.

I’ve held my Pentagon press pass for 28 years. For most of that time, when I wasn’t overseas in combat zones embedding with troops, I walked the halls, talking to and getting to know officers from all over the globe, at times visiting them in their offices.

Did I as a reporter solicit information? Of course. It’s called journalism: finding out what’s really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says.

Thomas Jefferson, no fan of the press himself, once wrote that our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, “and that cannot be limited without being lost.” He knew a free and fair press is an essential safeguard to a functioning democracy.

So now, how will the American people find out what is being done at the Pentagon in their name, with their hard-earned tax dollars, and more importantly, the decisions that may put their sons and daughters in harm’s way? With no reporters able to ask questions, it seems the Pentagon leadership will continue to rely on slick social media posts, carefully orchestrated short videos and interviews with partisan commentators and podcasters.