When lawyers for The New York Times and the Pentagon gathered in a federal courthouse last week to debate the department’s new restrictions on journalists, one topic kept coming up — and it had nothing to do with The Times.
At issue was a box that The Washington Post had placed on its website asking for tips about the military.
“Help us report on the Pentagon,” read the heading on the box. The paper appealed to “Defense Department civilians and service members” for information on “changes within the Pentagon and throughout the U.S. military.”
Appeals for tips are commonplace in journalism. News organizations, including The Times, regularly ask for them on their websites, and reporters on their social media profiles. But according to the Pentagon, The Post’s tip box crossed the line into the sort of “solicitation” that is not protected by the First Amendment and that could prompt punishment under the new restrictions.
That position drives at the heart of the debate over the new rules: Can it be wrong to ask for information?
The Pentagon says its new media policy, adopted in October, is meant to protect national security. The rules allow the department to declare journalists “security risks” and revoke their press passes if they violate guidelines on solicitation or engage in any conduct that the Pentagon believes threatens national security.
Media lawyers, however, say the rules penalize basic reporting and worry that the restrictions could spread to other agencies. After the Pentagon adopted the rules, dozens of journalists with traditional news outlets refused to agree to them and lost their press passes as a result. Pro-Trump influencers and commentators took their place.
The Times sued the Pentagon over the rules in December, arguing that they violate the First Amendment and give the department excessive latitude over how they are enforced.
At the hearing last week in U.S. District Court in Washington, Theodore Boutrous, a lawyer representing The Times, argued that the department had handed itself “unbridled discretion” to make enforcement decisions under the policy. To highlight that point, he noted a curious twist: While The Post’s box drew the scorn of defense officials, a call for tips from Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator who obtained a press pass in recent months, did not prompt a similar objection.
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Mr. Boutrous said.
“I hope that the government can explain it,” said Judge Paul Friedman, who is overseeing the case.
The Pentagon previously stated that Ms. Loomer’s request was acceptable because it appealed to a general audience. Michael Bruns, a Justice Department lawyer defending the Pentagon’s policy, said at the hearing: “I will say that the Washington Post tip line specifically targets military members.”
Judge Friedman is expected to issue a ruling soon in The Times’s case.
Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, and other top Pentagon officials have repeatedly attacked The Post’s coverage of military affairs. After The Post reported on Mr. Hegseth’s “unusually large” personal security requirements in August, a Pentagon press aide wrote a post on X suggesting “severe punishment” for the reporters. In December, Kingsley Wilson, press secretary for the department, called The Post “the epitome of fake news” for an investigation documenting the department’s first Caribbean boat strike.
Tensions between the two sides seeped into negotiations about the media restrictions, where defense officials made it “very clear that they viewed The Post’s solicitation on its website as crossing some line,” said David Schulz, who serves as a lawyer for the Pentagon Press Association, a group that represents journalists who report on the department.
The officials interpreted the wording in the tip box, Mr. Schulz said, as an “active solicitation to encourage military officers to break the law by revealing classified information.” A draft of the Pentagon restrictions cited the language of a Post tip-request box and indicated that it “would constitute a solicitation that could lead to revocation” of press credentials.
“They were very unhappy with that particular invitation,” Mr. Schulz said. “It came up more than once.”
Tim Parlatore, a special adviser to Mr. Hegseth, said the department had asked The Post to change its tip box to comply with the department’s restrictions.
“All they had to do,” Mr. Parlatore said, was change the language in the box addressing “Defense Department civilians and service members” to “anyone.” The Post declined that request, he said.
The Post said in a statement: “The Pentagon cited the tip box as an example of supposedly improper solicitation, but we have no records of them asking us to change the language. We have not and will not.”
A separate box at The Post — “Help us report on the Trump administration” — sought tips for reporters covering agencies across the federal government, including Hannah Natanson, whose home was searched by F.B.I. officials in January as part of a national security leak investigation. Ms. Natanson’s work occasionally intersected with the Pentagon beat, including coverage of the United States’ pressure against Venezuela and the capture of President Nicolás Maduro.
Both call-out boxes started appearing on The Post in the early months of the second Trump administration and went away in October when the newspaper phased out so-called context boxes as it moved to a new publishing system.
Gabe Rottman, vice president for policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said The Post’s box for military affairs requests was “incredibly anodyne.”
“Send us information about soup of the day in the cafeteria — there’s just no way that’s a national security threat,” he said.
Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
The post A Call for Reporting Tips Rankles Pentagon Officials appeared first on New York Times.
