ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz has spent decades covering national security, reporting on wars and conflict zones around the world. But the news she shared Wednesday from the Pentagon was more personal in nature.
“I surrendered my Pentagon pass today after 30 years because, like all major news organizations, ABC will not sign on to the Pentagon’s new restrictive requirements,” she wrote on Instagram. “That’s the image I wanted to remember when I left the building.”
Dozens of news organizations have rejected new access rules put in place by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying they would hinder, and potentially criminalize, traditional news gathering, such as agreeing not to “solicit” unauthorized information from government officials.
“As a journalist, did I solicit information? Of course,” wrote NPR’s Tom Bowman, who had held a press card for 28 years. “It’s called journalism: finding out what’s really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what a government or administration says.”
Many media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Examiner, Atlantic, Associated Press, Reuters, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NPR, PBS, and Newsmax, all opposed the guidelines and thus lost their press badges for reporting at the Pentagon.
“Nearly every reporter on the walls of the Pentagon – who have collectively covered the DoD for decades, if not more than a century – is about to turn in their credentials,” Mike Brest of the Washington Examiner said on X, alongside images of his press colleagues.
Other journalists, like the Atlantic’s Nancy Youssef, who spoke to TheWrap on Tuesday while cleaning out her office at the Pentagon, shared memories of their time in the building.
The Washington Post’s Tara Copp dug up what Pentagon reporters had to agree to, which included “no restrictions on information gathering,” adding, “That’s what we’ve signed up for years. The new 21 pages of requirements aren’t about security — they’re about limiting what the public will know.”
His 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.”
Journalists expressed frustration during the standoff over suggestions from Hegseth and others that they could move freely around the building and were not required to wear badges. The Pentagon Press Association said in a statement Monday that “Pentagon journalists have always worn badges” and that “access granted to journalists has always been limited to open, unclassified areas.”
The Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, accused the media of moving the goalpost by opposing access rules and suggested that journalists were experiencing “a real meltdown, crying victim online.” Hegseth mocked media outlets for mocking emojis used on X to say goodbye to the Times, Atlantic and CNN.
While much of the attention during this confrontation between Hegseth and the press focused on the responses of major media outlets, the Pentagon press corps included journalists from more specialized or niche outlets, such as Heather Mongilio, a reporter at USNI News, and Martin Matishak, senior cybersecurity reporter at The Record.
The departure of so many journalists is significant both in terms of history — the press has worked at the Pentagon since it opened in 1943 — and institutional memory, because a number of the departing journalists have decades of experience in the field.
“After covering the Pentagon for 35 years, I am surrendering my building badge today rather than submit to vague new DoD policies that restrict my right to participate in ordinary, lawful news gathering,” wrote the Times’ Eric Schmitt. “My colleagues in the Pentagon press corps and I will continue to inform the public.”
