The Pentagon announced Monday that it will move journalists from their dedicated workspace inside its iconic building and require them to work from a separate facility, days after a federal judge ruled that the Defense Department’s controversial media policy violated the press freedom and due process rights of the New York Times and one of its reporters.
In a statement posted on X on Monday evening, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote that the department will comply with the Friday ruling from Senior U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, but disagrees with it and will appeal.
Parnell also said that the Defense Department cannot adequately manage security within the five-sided building with working press inside. He announced that it has closed the “Correspondents’ Corridor” where journalists have worked for decades and move them to an “annex facility outside the Pentagon, but still on Pentagon grounds.”
The new facility “will be available when ready,” he said, without specifying when that will be. It is unclear how reporters for the Times will be reinstated, as the judge ordered, until the annex is ready.
Parnell also said that journalists will now require an escort by authorized Pentagon staffers to enter the building outside of scheduled press briefings and interviews, he wrote.
“The Department remains committed to transparency and to working with credentialed journalists who cover the Department and the U.S. military,” Parnell wrote. “The Department is equally committed to the security of the Pentagon and the protection of the men and women who work there.”
Friday’s ruling came in a case filed by the Times and one of its reporters after the Pentagon introduced a new press policy in October. The policy asked journalists to agree that the Defense Department could revoke press credentials for anyone soliciting information not authorized for release — even if it was unclassified.
Journalists from dozens of news organizations, including the Times and The Washington Post, refused to sign the new policy and turned in their credentials. A group of largely right-wing media signed up for credentials under the now-defunct rules.
A spokesman for the New York Times did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
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