A reporter for the Epoch Times has resigned after the right-wing outlet agreed to new rules requiring permission to publish stories reported from inside the Pentagon. Before he submitted his written resignation Friday, Andrew Thornebrooke worked as the outlet’s national security reporter.
Thornbrooke did not have a press pass at the Pentagon, but often covered the Defense Department and reported from its headquarters.
The New York Times reported Thornbrooke’s resignation letter noted he believed the outlet’s decision to abide by the new rules, instituted by Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, was a decision to “abdicate our responsibility as journalists in favor of merely repeating state narratives.”
He also wrote, “I can no longer reconcile my role with the direction the paper has chosen, including its increasing willingness to promote partisan materials, publish demonstrably false information, and manipulate the reporting of its ground staff to shape the worldview of our readers.”
The Epoch Times is one of three outlets that have agreed to the newest mandate. “The Epoch Times does not view the new guidelines for Pentagon press access as an impediment to our reporting,” the newspaper’s editor in chief Jasper Fakkert wrote in a letter published on its website Friday.
“The Epoch Times is no stranger to attempts to suppress freedom of the press; the Pentagon’s new media access policy is no such attack.”
In September the New York Times, the Associated Press, Fox News, major network TV outlets and several others issued a statement in defiance of the new guidelines.
Though the department insists it “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust,” the document also warned that “information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”
In addition to requiring approval before reporting is released to the public, the document also removes access to swaths of the Pentagon unless a reporter is accompanied by an approved escort. This is a stark change to previous policy, which allowed unescorted access throughout the building (apart from offices and meeting rooms).
Reporters from several outlets began cleaning out their desks and leaving the building for good last week.
The Times’ statement reads in full: “Asking independent journalists to submit to these kinds of restrictions is at stock odds with the constitutional protections of a free press in a democracy, and a continued attempt to throttle the public’s right to understand what their government is doing.”
“This is yet another step in a concerning pattern of reducing access to what the U.S. military is undertaking at taxpayer expense. Our journalists will continue to report the facts deeply and fairly,” the statement concluded.
