The New York Times sued the Defense Department on Monday for the second time in five months, arguing that a requirement that journalists be escorted while on Pentagon grounds violates the First Amendment.
The escort policy is “an unconstitutional attempt by the Pentagon to prevent independent reporting on military affairs,” a Times spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, said in an email to The Associated Press.
“As we have said before: Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”
On X, Defense Department spokesperson Sean Parnell called the Times' latest lawsuit “nothing more than an attempt to remove the barriers to them getting their hands on classified information.”
Continuing tension between the administration and the media
The Times lawsuit is another salvo in what has become an escalating tension between the U.S. media and the second Trump administration, which has played out both in the public arena and at times in the courts.
The paper said it had filed the additional lawsuit after first suing the Pentagon in December over new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to challenge an interim policy “that the Pentagon hastily put into place after a federal judge ruled in The Times’s favor in its original lawsuit.” The new policy included a requirement that journalists be accompanied by escorts at all times while in the Pentagon.
The policy was implemented in March following a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman that had struck down earlier restrictions on media access, saying they violated the rights of Times reporter Julian E. Barnes and the paper.
The following month, the judge ruled that the interim policy violated his March order. But the escort policy remained in place when an appeals court stayed part of Friedman’s ruling while the government appeals. The appeals process is ongoing.
The lawsuit follows an earlier one but is more specific
The new lawsuit, filed by the paper and reporter Barnes in the District of Columbia district court, aims to get the courts to directly address the escort rule on constitutional grounds.
In the filing, the paper contends the rule, like other Pentagon media restrictions, has a clear aim — “closing the Pentagon to any journalist or news organization unwilling to report only what Department officials approve.”
This, it contends, is “patently unconstitutional.”
In December, the Times sued the Pentagon, attempting to overturn new rules imposed by Hegseth that, it contended, violated the Constitution’s freedom of speech and due process provisions. Outlets such as the Times walked out of the Pentagon rather than agree to the rules as a condition for getting a press credential. They continue to cover the U.S. military from outside the building, while a new press corps approved by the department currently occupies the Pentagon space.
Parnell, in his X post Monday, asserted that the Times and its journalists “want to roam the halls of the Pentagon freely and without an escort — a privilege that they do not have in any other federal building.”
He added: “The Department’s policy is completely lawful and narrowly designed to protect national security information from unlawful criminal disclosure."
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