The Pentagon’s “Correspondents’ Corridor” area—used for decades by reporters covering the U.S. military—will close immediately under a new Defense Department media policy announced Monday by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesperson, according to the official. Parnell said the department will also remove media offices from within the Pentagon after a federal judge ordered changes to the credentials process for New York Times reporters.
The judge, Paul Friedman of U.S. District Court in Washington, ruled last week in the Times’ lawsuit that the Pentagon’s credentialing policy violated the journalists’ constitutional rights. Friedman ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the press credentials of seven Times journalists and struck down some restrictions on news reporting, according to the report.
In his decision, Friedman said the evidence showed the policy was designed to weed out “disfavored journalists” and replace them with reporters who are “on board and willing to serve” the government—an instance, he said, of illegal viewpoint discrimination. The Pentagon did not accept that framing. Parnell said the Defense Department disagrees with the ruling and is pursuing an appeal, and he attributed the restrictions to security concerns that journalists have rejected.
Under the Monday announcement, Parnell said journalists will still have access to the Pentagon for press conferences and interviews arranged through the department’s public affairs team, but they will have to be escorted. Parnell said journalists would ultimately be able to work from an “annex” outside the building, which he described as “available when ready,” without providing details on when that would happen.
The Pentagon’s changes come as press access remains a flashpoint in the Trump administration’s approach to media coverage, with the lawsuit described as part of a broader dispute involving credentialing and newsroom access. The Pentagon policy also reflects a larger pattern of tension over access between legacy outlets and the administration’s preferred communications channels.
The Pentagon Press Association criticized the Monday announcement, saying it violates the ruling. The association said the latest Pentagon policy is “a clear violation of the letter and spirit of last week’s ruling,” and asked why the Pentagon is choosing to restrict press freedoms that help inform Americans, according to the report.
The Associated Press, meanwhile, said it is waiting for a decision from a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals in a separate lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration. The AP contends that Trump’s White House team punished the outlet by reducing its access to presidential events after the outlet did not follow the administration’s lead in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.