Photo credit to Kevin Wolf / AP
By: Colin Schroyer
October 16, 2025 — On Wednesday, October 15, at just past 4 p.m., news journalists grabbed their belongings and walked out of the United States Pentagon building in rejection of the Pentagon’s new requirements.
Beginning in September, the Defense Department informed journalists that they must agree to new terms to be allowed to report from within the Pentagon; journalists must not report on and publicly disclose any information not authorized beforehand by the U.S. government. In other words, the only news permitted by the government would be allowed if news organizations want to remain in the Pentagon.
Overwhelmingly, the response is “no.” In a joint statement between ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News Media, and NBC News shared on the companies’ respective X accounts, they stated, “we join virturally every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues. The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections.”
This walk-out marks the end of a decades-long cooperation between the U.S. government and news outlets — one that has stood since 1943. Known often as the Pentagon Press Association, these news correspondents and reporters are assigned to share reports from the government.
The new rules are being imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. A former employee of Fox News, Hegseth’s new requirements are the next step in the trend of constricting free speech by the U.S. government. During his tenure as Defense Secretary, he held only two formal press briefings, banned reporters from many parts of the Pentagon building without an escort, and headed media leak investigations.
In response to a public post by the New York Times’ Public Relations account on X, formerly known as Twitter, regarding the decision to decline the new requirements, Hegseth responded with simply a waving hand emoji.
Jack Keane, retired U.S. Army general and analyst for Fox News, said, “What they’re really doing, they want to spoon-feed information to the journalist, and that would be their story. That’s not journalism.”
As of October 16, only One America News Network has been publicly confirmed as a signee of the agreement. In an email to NBC News, the president of OANN, Charles Herring, said, “After thorough review of the revised press policy by our attorney,” noting that “revised” was bolded and underlined in the email text, “OAN staff has signed the document.”
Though (virtually all) news outlets no longer have a direct presence in the Pentagon, sweeping declarations of continued effort and journalistic reporting have been made. “We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press,” stated the coalition of news outlets in their joint statement.
Nancy A. Youssef, a staff writer for The Atlantic, in her article on the collapse of in-house Pentagon journalism, succinctly states, “I’ve been evicted from a building I’ve covered for 18 years. I’ll keep doing my job anyway.”
Now, speaking as Editor-in-Chief of the Thielensian, in a country with already established laws with consequences for libel, efforts to control or filter what comes out of the government are flat-out censorship; withholding information that has not been “approved” would be to censor every story but the one the government desires to tell.
Regarding the government’s misinformation concerns, the Hippocratic oath employed by medical doctors does not prevent death; in the same way, journalistic integrity and effort do not turn every journalist into a perfect lie-detector. Morally upright journalists — those who adhere to the aforementioned journalistic values, including accuracy and honesty — want nothing more than to speak the truth and do so knowing full well the consequences of deliberately spreading misinformation.
We may not be literally on the heels of the government, reporting on crucial and relevant news, but we strive to do our best to be metaphorically hot on its tail. The Thielensian and its staff vow to continue reporting factually-based news, upholding the values of journalism and what it stands for.
