Pentagon demands journalists allow government to vet information

Tony Czuczka, Bloomberg News on Sep 20, 2025

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is requiring journalists agree to submit anything they publish about it for government approval as a condition of access, the latest Trump administration effort to control during peacetime what information the public learns about military operations.

The new rule — part of an updated press credentialing process presented to news organizations this week — came in a memo by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell. The memo said that journalists will be required to sign the 10-page form as a condition of receiving and holding a press pass to report on the Defense Department.

Anyone who signs then agrees that Pentagon information “must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”

To justify the new restriction, the Pentagon says it must protect classified national security information as well as anything designated “controlled unclassified information.”

President Donald Trump’s second-term clashes with media flared up this week when Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for comments about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk after a pressure campaign, including threats by Federal Communications Chair Brendan Carr.

In April, the White House eliminated long-standing media pool access for newswire services after a federal court ordered the administration to restore credentials for The Associated Press.

That followed a lawsuit by AP when the White House began restricting its White House coverage after the wire service refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the new name Trump gave it, the Gulf of America, a change other countries don’t recognize.

Trump also changed the name of the Defense Department back to its pre-World War II name of the War Department, but the change requires Congress to finalize it.