Week of Oct. 16, 2025

From the editor’s desk

It’s an unusual week in the history of American journalism. 

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued an ultimatum to reporters in the Pentagon, requiring them to pledge that they would not solicit unauthorized information—and if they refused, they’d need to forfeit their press badges.

That’s not the unusual part. The Trump administration’s continued attempts to stifle the press, while alarming, are at this point not surprising.

But before I get to the unusual part, here’s a bit more detail on the ultimatum. This passage is from the document itself:

DoW (that’s the Department of War, what Hegseth is now calling the Department of Defense) remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust. However, DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released … even if it is unclassified.

While you may hear some spin that likens “unauthorized information” to “classified information,” the latter is not what Pentagon reporters are being denied here. Here, in one concise CNN report, is a clear example of such spin. Hegseth says that reporters are trying to get classified information—and then veteran reporter Barbara Starr clarifies the matter: 

(Hegseth) seems to deliberately continue to press the case that reporters are trying to get classified information out of the military. It’s not been my experience, and I daresay not those of most of my Pentagon colleagues, that that is the case. Classified information is behind locked doors in the Pentagon. Reporters have no access to it. And just talking to somebody is not soliciting classified information.

Almost every news organization with a reporter in the Pentagon refused to these demands, forfeiting access—including NPR, CNN, FOX News, Newsmax and numerous others. According to reports by several major news outlets, One America News (the MAGA-approved outlet that was sued for spreading election fraud conspiracy theories) may be the only organization that accepted Hegseth’s terms.

So, what is the unusual part? News outlets across the spectrum are saying pretty much the same thing in response to Hegseth’s policy.

Said Thomas Evans, editor-in-chief of NPR:

NPR is taking this very seriously. We’ll be working with other news organizations to push back. We’re big fans of the 1st Amendment and transparency and we want the American public to understand what’s being done in their name.

And on FOX News, Jack Keane, a retired general and a senior strategic analyst for the network, made the same point that Barbara Starr made on CNN: 

It doesn’t seem like the whole story is being told to our viewers here. What they’re really doing—they want to spoon-feed information to the journalists, and that would be their story. That’s not journalism. Journalism is going out and finding the story and getting all the facts to support it.

Keane continued:

No one’s going to walk in and bang on the door of a four-star general or a senior civilian policy leader in the Pentagon. I never had that, but I did have journalists chasing a story or something was going on with the Army, and those things are legitimate.

Take care,

—Kris Vagner, managing editor

From the RN&R