New York Times sues Hegseth, Defence Department over new press rules
The newspaper and one of its reporters accuse the Trump administration of violating their free speech and due-process rights.
The New York Times and its intelligence reporter Julian E. Barnes have sued the Trump administration, saying the Defence Department’s new press rules violate their free speech and due-process rights.
The lawsuit names as defendants the Defence Department, as well as Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. It says the policies, enacted earlier this fall, are unreasonable and chill protected speech that Department officials might not like.
The Pentagon issued a memo in September stating that reporters would need to sign a document restricting their communication with military sources. Many outlets interpreted it as requiring that they agree not to disclose classified or other sensitive information without prior authorisation. The guidelines were revised in subsequent weeks, but major media organisations baulked at the final version in October.
The Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, CNN and others declined to sign on to the new Defence Department policy.
Publishers and broadcasters that didn’t sign the policy lost regular press access to the headquarters building and had to clear out their workspaces. Another group of media representatives, including conservative influencer Laura Loomer and former Republican congressman and One America News Network host Matt Gaetz, have since been granted press credentials and attended a briefing this week.
The Times said Thursday that the policy punished newsgathering. “Journalists reporting on the US military face loss of their press credentials for doing nothing more than bringing facts to light on behalf of the public, one of the core tenets of the free press in a democracy,” the company said in a press release announcing its lawsuit, which it filed in US District Court for the District of Columbia.
Barnes, who has been with the Washington bureau of the Times since 2018, writes about national security and military intelligence. He previously worked for the Journal.
The Times asks for a judge to declare the new policy unconstitutional and issue an injunction barring its enforcement, and that the Pentagon reinstate press credentials for Barnes and other Times reporters.
The Defence Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr Parnell posted on X in October that access to the building “is a privilege, not a right and the Department is not only legally permitted, but morally obligated to impose reasonable regulations on the exercise of that privilege.”
For decades, reporters wearing identification badges had wide-ranging access to non-classified areas of the Pentagon.
The Trump administration has up-ended longstanding press traditions, including determining which outlets are part of the press pool and limiting access to certain parts of the West Wing where senior communications staff typically work.
Earlier this year, the Defence Department removed dedicated Pentagon office space for outlets, including the Times, NBC News, the Hill and CNN, giving the spots instead to the New York Post, One America News Network, Breitbart News Network, HuffPost News and others, in what they called a new rotation program.
The administration has also recently launched a new official White House webpage criticising individual journalists and news outlets for what it calls “false and misleading” coverage.
The Associated Press sued members of the Trump administration early this year, arguing that they violated the First Amendment by barring its reporters from White House press events in certain spaces after it refused to change its style guidance on the Gulf of Mexico to the administration’s preferred language, the Gulf of America. A federal appeals court in Washington, DC, heard oral arguments on the case in November.
Donald Trump in September filed a $15 billion ($23bn) lawsuit against the Times, accusing the paper of defamation and election interference related to the 2024 election. Days later, a federal judge struck the lawsuit, though it was soon amended and refiled. The Times said the lawsuit was without merit.
Mr Trump has also accused Journal publisher Dow Jones and parent company News Corp of defaming him in an article about a letter bearing his signature that was included in a 2003 birthday book for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Mr Trump has denied writing the letter. A Dow Jones spokeswoman has said regarding that case, “We have full confidence in the rigour and accuracy of our reporting.”
Wall Street Journal
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