Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agreeing new rules
239 comments
·October 16, 2025alkonaut
9dev
Game theory applies here. There will always be one journalist without any moral qualms that’ll stay, betting on everyone else leaving, and making a scoop.
rob74
Well, the White House press corps has already been changed to (how do I write this in a way that won't get me downvoted?) include more reporters friendly to the current administration since the White House asserted the right to determine itself who gets access (formerly it was the White House Correspondents' Association), so the chances of such a more-or-less unified boycott are slim. And I don't have any doubts that the Pentagon will also quickly find enough "warm bodies" (besides those from OANN) to prevent an embarrassing almost empty room at the next press conference...
immibis
They should all ask the hard questions. If they're going to not have access either way, why not take the way that also exposes the corruption?
assimpleaspossi
>>there is a fear of not being selected to ask questions
That's not exactly what's happening.
>>The rules limit where reporters can go without an official escort and convey “an unprecedented message of intimidation” for anyone in the Defense Department who might want to speak to a reporter without the approval of Hegseth’s team
On NPR (National Public Radio) a few days ago, a reporter said they could wander the halls of the Pentagon and ask anyone they ran into any question about anything. This will not be allowed anymore and, considering it's the Pentagon, doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Cthulhu_
They wouldn't have full access, but yes, journalists should be able to ask anyone anything. Asking is legal, and it's up to the person being asked to not say anything that a journalist isn't supposed to know.
What bad things have happened from what you're describing?
Havoc
First sign of a profession having a backbone in months.
Although the silent treatment the generals dished out at recent meeting wasn’t bad either
coldtea
>First sign of a profession having a backbone in months
They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades.
Now they suddenly grew a "backbone"?
They just see the signs of lack of long term legitimacy for this particular government and play pretend at safe courage.
jacquesm
Consider the power of this statement then: if they were ok with all of those things and now they draw a line that means that things have gotten much, much worse than they were before.
roenxi
Well... maybe. If a company brings in new anti-sexual-assault training and a bunch of people quit around the same time that doesn't necessarily suggest the problem is the outrageous training.
I'd quite like to actually see what the rules are, but this is just a complex one. On the one hand, obviously the US military would probably have an easier time securing classified info if unreliable people aren't wandering through the building. On the other hand, the US people do benefit from random people wandering the building and would get more out of looser requirements on who can get in. Making it easy to keep information classified has always been a strategic error that has probably done a lot of damage to the US.
sillyfluke
>They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades.
It's difficult to see those on the same plane really. There's spineless and there's spineless. The official "leaks" as theatre as it was, occasionally functioned as soft checks and balances for revealing in-fighting amongst the different departments of goverment -- when the pentagon, white house, CIA were at odds with each other over strategy and tactics on some topic-- and often this was used as narrative fodder for both the left and right.
As for the embeds, at least they saw some shit and had skin in the game by being near the action. Some of them actually died on assignment. Lıke, what the fuck are we talking about here? And when you have Israel not letting any reporters into Gaza I have little confidence Trump won't take a page out of that playbook if he gets the US in some ground conflict either.
So you have administrations that allowed all that in the past, and you have this snowflake administration who's afraid of some questions being asked on a golf course in Florida.
JumpCrisscross
This might be what we need. SecDef is, at best, an idiot. At worst, he’s compromised. Giving him less earned media may be a win.
mamonster
>SecDef is, at best, an idiot. At worst, he’s compromised
He acts like every other person (myself included) that i know that had a serious alcohol problem and is now somewhat relapsed but still looks funny at his favorite drink. With a guy like this you literally never know what the clear liquid in the glass bottle is.
newsclues
[flagged]
apples_oranges
But that's a separate issue, different circumstances and, mostly, different people. Similar to how they (in part) reported during epidemic.
But now they did something good and it's somehow nullified by the other things?
Also: You are promoting that we keep a grudge. Are you planning to let go of it sometime?
n4r9
Also, in some cases the press did apologise, e.g. https://archive.ph/F3Ra1 . Fox news were notoriously the worst propagandisers in this case; I searched but could not find any apology from them.
justacrow
> Also: You are promoting that we keep a grudge. Are you planning to let go of it sometime?
Sure! Once the people responsible for the wars have been punished. Any day now...
ben_w
What I want to know is: why would anyone else bother staying given these new rules?
If you did agree to the terms you'd be limited to publishing the official story (and can't talk to anyone for off-the-record stuff), but you get that for free anyway even if you never show up, so why bother with the extra expense of actually going to the Pentagon?
burkaman
They'll get exclusive interviews, they'll get to be visible on TV asking questions to important people, they'll get invited on trips where they can film in front of a cool background like a military base or something.
I think it's worth it for anyone that cares about the aesthetics of journalism more than actually reporting anything of value.
egorfine
> why would anyone else bother staying given these new rules?
Imagine being an aspiring blogger/independent journalist. One can only dream of such a possibility as to join the press corp of Pentagon. Of course many will agree to all restrictions and rules for the opportunity.
general1465
Then how are you different than the "press release" page on Pentagon website?
egorfine
You don't get access to networking and opportunities by reposting press releases from the warmth of your basement.
belorn
They get to publishing official "leaks" and the ability to ask additional questions that allow the story to be tailored towards their readers.
JumpCrisscross
> why would anyone else bother staying given these new rules?
The ones who stay are influencers. Not journalists. Their viewers (almost certainly not readers) don’t know the difference.
refurb
That's not true. It's an agreement not to publish classified information that has been leaked to the media.
Nothing stops them from publishing criticisms of the administrations talking points, or conversations that happen outside of press conferences.
liampulles
Hey I embrace remote working too, but not everyone views it that way
toyg
> can't talk to anyone for off-the-record stuff
Obviously this rule would apply only to real journalists. Members of the party will get free roam. They will stay.
Just another day in the life of a regime.
0dayz
I'm pleasantly surprised that journalists are doing this due to how tepid news companies generally are.
ruszki
They couldn’t do anything else. The power grab happens even when they would have succumbed. At least they quit with a spine.
If they don’t go back in a week, which can be seen from several examples, like Hungary, that it doesn’t work. I think compared to the Hungarian government, this was a misstep of Trump (which I hope they make it more). In Hungary, when something like this happened, you always lost when you didn’t succumb to authoritarianism. You lost your previous privileges no matter what, but you lost more if you protested. They tried to keep up a facade that nothing changed, while everything changed. In this case it seems to me as an outside observer, that nothing value was lost by quitting compared to signing up.
Or Trump and co don’t want to keep a facade at all. But then they need to bet on that most people in America are really fascists.
carbonbioxide
This is move by the journalists is inspiring to be honest, ending press freedom is what they want.
chinathrow
Not a US citizen but affected by the current trajectory of the policies by the current administration.
I wonder at what point in time people will have enough with what they are changing. How does the HN crew based in the US think about the current administration?
intermerda
> How does the HN crew based in the US think about the current administration?
HN and the broader tech community have had their mask off moments.
aoshifo
I do think the HN and tech community is a more diverse group, than just the ultra libertarians, opportunists, and outright fascists. Maybe that's just my naive hope. In any case I would also like to know how US based techies think about this administration and the direction the country is heading in.
egorfine
> people will have enough
Likely at least a third of Americans do actively support the current administration and their decisions, so "having enough" is out of the question.
actionfromafar
”Let’s not talk politics, it’s just inflammatory. Hey, cool LLM model. Shiny!”
jacquesm
That would be very funny if it weren't disturbingly close to the truth.
user2722
I believe 90% of mean people on the web talking about politics are actually bots.
esperent
And when people do talk about politics it's exactly the kind of hot takes you'd expect from people who think they're very smart (and probably are when it comes to choosing a database) but are completely uninformed about the current topic and only capable of parroting referred opinions, or making statements they expect the group to agree with. Nobody comes out of the conversation smarter than they went in.
Honestly, I think it's better that we do keep conversation here to shiny technology. If you want to talk politics, go and find a group of people who know what they're talking about. That way you might learn something.
ruszki
Most people do the same thing with shiny technology topics too.
But you’re right. It seems to be a better place than the alternatives, but heck, I learn rarely from comments compared how often I did 10 years ago on a - back then - small subreddit. Most comments can be inferred just from headlines, not even from the articles.
immibis
Problem: Everything is political. Pretending not to talk about politics, is mostly just supporting a certain kind of politics (the one that you get by default if you avoid talking about politics).
ap99
49.8% of the population voted for Trump, myself among them. First time voting Republican.
Everything I've seen so far from Trump is what I voted for. And almost everything Democrats have said and done has reaffirmed my choice.
Every one I've spoken to that has been surprised Trump was elected lives in a bubble. Hacker News is one such bubble.
You're not going to get any reliable "when are the masses going to revolt" info here.
rl1987
People being grabbed off the streets and transported to prison in unrelated country is what you voted for?
ap99
The people who are in the US illegally, 1000% yes.
JumpCrisscross
If there is anything Trump is doing popularly, it’s aggressively removing illegal immigrants from our streets. To the extent there is tolerance for Fourth Amendment violations, it may be from historic indifference to enforcing our immigration laws.
adamors
About 77 million people voted for Trump in 2024, that is 22% of the US population. He is actually far more unpopular than people think.
ap99
This is how you lie with statistics.
What percent of the US population is eligible to vote, what percent actually voted, and which percent did Kamala receive?
intermerda
[flagged]
qqxufo
Curious how long this will actually last before the outlets cave under access pressure again. Has anything like this worked before?
crocowhile
It has worked in the UK. The then government had decided to unilaterally exclude some "hostile" media from the room and all the others walked out in protest.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/feb/03/political-j...
rob74
Not sure if it this was ever tried before by any US government entity - but, if the condition for remaining an accredited Pentagon reporter is only reporting the official statements of the Pentagon (which you can also copy from their press releases), then having the accreditation seems largely pointless to me?
JumpCrisscross
The Pengagon Press Corps was born out of WWII censorship [1]. Shutting down this institution may be for the best.
[1] https://brendonbeebe.substack.com/p/history-of-pentagon-pres...
harvey9
Time was when the liberal press looked down on journalists who were embedded with the military. The article mentions one who has had a desk in the pentagon for almost two decades. I would question the independence of someone so well embedded and note nobody is resigning here, just moving to other offices.
StackRanker3000
Why would they resign? Their beef is with the government, not their employers
ncallaway
They didn't resign.
They turned in their badges that allows them to access certain spaces in the pentagon. They're still reporters, they still work for their employers, and they can still do reporting.
jacquesm
You're agreeing.
harvey9
I don't think they should resign, I just want to be clear that this is taking a stand which won't cost them their pay.
alfiedotwtf
I used to watch Donald Rumsfeld daily giving his briefing… the hardest questions asked to him by the beacons of democracy in the press corps was “how are you”.
trenchpilgrim
> I remember how then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was ecstatic after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, insisting that it showed the success of the U.S. invasion. Not long after, I ran into an officer at the Pentagon who told me, "No, Tom. It's not a success. Saddam Hussein's supporters are attacking our supply lines. Now, we have to send more troops back to guard them." That was because the United States, at Rumsfeld's insistence, never sent an adequate number of forces to Iraq to begin with — a fact another Army general warned me about, unsolicited — and I reported on, before the war even began.
> Instead of toeing the official line, that reporting helped people understand what U.S. troops were really facing. Far from being a success, the fall of Baghdad marked the beginning of an insurgency that stretched on for years.
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/14/g-s1-93297/pentagon-reporter-...
bongodongobob
[flagged]
Xss3
Are we sure this isnt exactly what the current administration wants to happen? Less press so they can get away with more?
prmoustache
Well every step they do seems to be copy/pasted from North Korea.
Since nobody is protesting now you can expect that 5 years from now the regime will start making disappear people vaguely opposing the gov decisions or being suicided on a regular basis.
ruszki
The government gets that even if journalists agree.
JumpCrisscross
> Less press
War journalists will keep reporting. This just means the government’s position doesn’t get a say every time.
contrarian1234
While what the government is doing more widely is quite scary, this in isolation seems sensible?
I don't really get what the journalists' role is? To goad and harass employees of the Department of defense in to slipping up and saying more than they should? To encourage people to leak information?
Given the secretive nature of the whole institution, It seems sensible that there is some formal process for deciding what information should and shouldn't be shared. The previous setup seems sort of insane.
If the army is putting babies on spikes and it needs to be leaked.. it seems that that should happen outside of the Pentagon itself and shouldn't involve getting some government approved badge...
ZvG_Bonjwa
Without proper press access how is there any real accountability?
Leaks and whistleblowers do not form in a vacuum. Less press means less oversight, fewer connections built, fewer threads pulled.
And even so, not all Pentagon business is all “life-and-death-top-secret”. Censorious governments LOVE the “national security” excuse.
contrarian1234
Accountable in what sense? How are journalists trying to pry extra info from staff helpful? If they want to ask questions at press conferences and whatnot - as far as I understand they still can?
postexitus
Free Press is part of checks and balances. If you are going to rely on leaks for this stuff to come out, you are going to have a bad time.
contrarian1234
isn't what they're doing at the pentagon essentially getting people to leak stuff?
postexitus
by questioning them publicly and holding them to account. That's not a leak. That's keeping people in check (or force them to lie in front of camera). Remove that and you only rely on Edward Snowdens of the world.
trhway
https://econofact.org/factbrief/has-the-pentagon-failed-its-...
"In November 2024, the Pentagon failed to pass its annual audit, meaning that it wasn't able to fully account for how its $824 billion budget was used. This was the 7th failed audit in a row, since the Department of Defense became required to undergo yearly-audits in 2018."
Kicking journalists out would probably not make things more auditable so to speak.
Gud
I am so proud of the journalists for standing up to what is right.
It seems to me there is some hope for America after all.
This kind of boycott needs to happen for the WH press corps. If there is a fear of not being selected to ask questions, or being expelled from the room for asking tough questions, then everyone needs to walk. Immediately.