Martha Raddatz, ABC News’ chief global affairs correspondent, has spent decades covering national security, reporting from wars and conflict zones around the world. But the news she shared Wednesday from the Pentagon was of a more personal nature.
“I turned in my Pentagon pass today after 30 years because like all major news organizations ABC will not sign the new restrictive pentagon requirements,” she wrote on Instagram. “This was the image I wanted to remember as I walked out of the building.”
Dozens of news organizations rejected new access rules under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth they believe would hamper, and potentially criminalize, traditional newsgathering, such as agreeing not to “solicit” unauthorized information from government officials.
“Did I as a reporter solicit information? Of course,” wrote NPR’s Tom Bowman, who had held a press pass for 28 years. “It’s called journalism: finding out what’s really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or administration says.”
A raft of media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, the Atlantic, the Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR, PBS and Newsmax all objected to the guidelines, and thereby forfeit their press badges to report from inside the Pentagon.
“Almost all of reporters featured on wall in the Pentagon — who collectively have been covering DoD for decades if not more than a century — are set to hand in their credentials, the Washington Examiner’s Mike Brest post on X, alongside images his colleagues in the press corps.
Other journalists, like the Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef, who spoke to TheWrap on Tuesday as she cleaned out her desk in the Pentagon, shared mementos from their time in the building.
The Washington Post’s Tara Copp dug up what Pentagon reporters used to have to agree to, which included “no restrictions on news gathering,” adding: “It’s what we’ve signed for years. The new 21 pages of requirements are not about safety – they are about limiting what the public will know.”
Her Post colleague, Dan Lamothe, took a selfie after turning in his badge, writing, “My colleagues and I will stay on the beat, but in a new way. The work continues.”
Reporters expressed frustration during the standoff over suggestions from Hegseth and others that they were able to freely roam about the building and weren’t required to wear badges. The Pentagon Press Association said in a Monday statement that “reporters in the Pentagon have always worn badges” and that “access provided to reporters has always been limited to unclassified, open areas.”
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell accused the media of moving the goal post in objecting to access rules and suggested reporters were having “a full blown meltdown, crying victim online.“ Hegseth mocked outlets mocking used emojis on X to wave goodbye to the Times, Atlantic, and CNN.
While much of the attention during this Hegseth-press standoff focused on responses from major media outlets, the Pentagon press corps included journalists from more specialized or niche outlets, such as Heather Mongilio, a reporter with USNI News, and Martin Matishak, a senior cybersecurity reporter at The Record.
The departure of so many journalists is significant both in terms of history — the press corps has worked in the Pentagon since it opened in 1943 — and institutional memory, as a number of reporters leaving have decades of experience on the beat.
“After covering the Pentagon for 35 years, I’m turning in my building badge today rather than submit to DoD’s vague new policies that restrict my right to engage in ordinary and legal news gathering,” wrote the Times’ Eric Schmitt. “My Pentagon press corps colleagues and I will continue to inform the public.”
“It is a dark day for free press of all stripes in this country,” wrote Barbara Starr, who covered the Pentagon for more than two decades at CNN. “Nobody voted for a Pete Hegseth to limit Americans from knowing what is happening to its military every day. But buckle up—this is a press corps that never EVER stops reporting. The news will keep coming.
