Hmmmm … Thank goodness for the three-tier system of government in the USA.
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A federal judge ruled on Friday that the Pentagon’s restrictions on news outlets violate the First Amendment and issued an order tossing parts of the Defense Department’s policy, handing a victory to The New York Times, which filed suit in December over the restrictions.
Judge Paul Friedman, of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also ordered the Pentagon to restore the press passes of seven journalists for The Times. They had surrendered those passes in October instead of signing the policy, which empowered the Pentagon to declare journalists “security risks” and revoke their press passes if they engaged in any conduct that the Pentagon believed threatened national security.
In his 40-page ruling, Judge Friedman wrote that the Pentagon’s policy rewarded reporters who were “willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”
Siding with an argument advanced by The Times, Judge Friedman added that the Pentagon had given itself too much power to enforce its new rules. The policy also violates journalists’ due process rights under the Fifth Amendment, he said, writing that it “provides no way for journalists to know how they may do their jobs without losing their credentials.”
The ruling was a defeat for the Trump administration, which has been engaged in a multifaceted pressure campaign against the news media. ABC News and CBS News’s parent company agreed to multimillion-dollar settlements to resolve suits that President Trump brought against the networks. The ABC late-night star Jimmy Kimmel was temporarily pulled off the air last year after Mr. Trump’s top communications regulator assailed his program and suggested that he might take regulatory action against the broadcaster.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former host on Fox News, has continued Mr. Trump’s adversarial stance toward the news media. He proposed denying access to Pentagon to a reporter from NBC News, then removed several news organizations from their on-site workstations. Months later, he curtailed the unescorted roaming privileges of journalists within the complex.
Friday’s ruling against the Pentagon followed a similarly stark decision this month from a federal judge to restore the operations of Voice of America, a government-funded news organization that Mr. Trump had ordered shuttered a year ago in an executive order.
A spokesman for The Times said Judge Friedman’s ruling “reaffirms the right of The Times and other independent media to continue to ask questions on the public’s behalf,” adding that “Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars.”
Sean Parnell, the chief spokesman at the Pentagon, said in an X post, “We disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal.”
The Pentagon policy took effect in October and drew condemnations from numerous mainstream outlets for penalizing news-gathering methods long protected by the First Amendment. Dozens of journalists who had press passes to the Pentagon turned them in rather than sign the new policy. The Defense Department then welcomed a new set of credentialed media members, most of them pro-Trump commentators or influencers.
The Pentagon’s policy also required journalists to agree not to solicit information from military employees unless the employees were authorized to speak for the Pentagon. The Times had argued that the policy required the press to publish only official statements.
At a March 6 hearing, Judge Friedman signaled his frustration with the rules. A Justice Department lawyer representing the Defense Department, for instance, drew an animated response from the judge when he argued that journalists don’t have First Amendment protections when they solicit the “disclosure of unauthorized information.”
“Why not? Why not?” Judge Friedman replied, adding that department officials can simply refuse to answer such inquiries from journalists, but there is “no proscription” on journalists’ asking questions.
Judge Friedman had also appeared skeptical of a provision in the policy declaring off-limits certain journalistic tip requests. Though the Pentagon drew a bright line delineating prohibited tip requests from problematic ones, Judge Friedman said: “I don’t understand that argument. I hope that the government can explain it.”
In his ruling on Friday, Judge Friedman closed his opinion by citing his own statements from the bench during oral arguments.
“A lot of things need to be held tightly and secure,” the judge said, referring to the department’s security imperatives. “But openness and transparency allows members of the public to know what their government is doing in times of peace and, more important, in times of war and upheaval.”
In the March 6 hearing, the Justice Department asked that the court send the rules back to the Defense Department for refining — so that the Pentagon could “rehabilitate the policy” — rather than toss out the disputed provisions.
Judge Friedman on Friday instead tossed out the policy for all of the journalists who cover the Pentagon. The Pentagon Press Association, which represents journalists on the national security beat, called for the “immediate reinstatement” of all of its members.
Gabe Rottman, vice president of policy at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement that “the court affirmed that our security and liberty rely on the press’s freedom to publish and the public’s ability to access news about government affairs free from state control.”
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A federal judge ordered the press passes of seven journalists for The New York Times to be restored. Credit…Lucia Vazquez for The New York Times
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Click the link below for the complete article:
https://www.nytimes.com
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