The Pentagon has officially barred journalists from its press office, marking the newest step to tighten media access to the U.S. military since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Pentagon spokesman Joel Valdez said on Monday that the administration had reclassified the office as a "Controlled Sensitive Information Facility" due to the presence of speechwriters with access to classified information.
"These speechwriters routinely handle classified material and require access to the SIPRNet network used to share secret information inside the Pentagon," Valdez said in a statement to Al Jazeera. "Therefore, journalists will no longer be allowed in that office area. Access to the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the Press Secretary will be by appointment only."
According to a report first published by The Washington Post, the move follows a string of steps by the Trump administration to limit news organizations' ability to cover the military and other parts of the government.
In March, the Defense Department said it would no longer allow news organizations to maintain offices at the Pentagon after a judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit challenging new rules for granting press credentials. The Pentagon also announced that journalists would need official escorts while inside the complex, a policy The New York Times is seeking to reverse in a separate lawsuit filed in May.
The National Press Club condemned the latest restrictions as a "worrying escalation" in the Trump administration's efforts to cut media oversight of the Pentagon. "Independent coverage of the U.S. military is indispensable," said club president Mark Schoeff Jr. "When journalists are pushed away from the institutions they cover, the American people get less information, less transparency, and less oversight."
The nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation also criticized the move. Seth Stern, the organization's head, told Al Jazeera: "It's rare to get anything other than misrepresentation and outright lies from the Pentagon press office these days, so it's hard to imagine what grounds they have to call the space classified. The only thing sensitive or secret about the information released by Pete Hegseth is that it's false."
