“A well-informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy,” reads a quotation often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, as it “provides the best defense against tyranny.”
Recent restrictions by the newly renamed Department of War on news organizations come straight out of the playbook of aspiring authoritarians. On the eve of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Americans should recoil at this attempt to deprive them of the information they need to hold the government accountable for its actions.
In January, a week after the Senate confirmed Pete Hegseth as secretary of Defense, he removed The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and NBC journalists from offices assigned to them at the Pentagon. He gave slots instead to three conservative outlets: One America News Network, Breitbart and the New York Post. In a thinly disguised effort to show that the “annual media rotation program” was nonpartisan, he also chose HuffPost, a more progressive organization that had not requested a space.
In February, Hegseth banned all 90 reporters covering the Defense Department from the Pentagon briefing room, except when government officials were making announcements or taking questions there. The room is one of the few places in the building where journalists can use Wi-Fi to file stories and on-camera reports.
And in a 17-page memo released in September, Hegseth declared that permission to enter the Pentagon would be granted only to reporters who signed a statement promising not to publish classified information or what he called “controlled unclassified information,” unless it was approved for release by “an appropriate official.” Reporters cannot use unnamed military personnel as sources and must be accompanied by an official escort when they are in the facility. The secretary warned that failure to abide by these rules could result in suspension or revocation of access to the building.
Hegseth, who provided details of an imminent U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen in a group chat in April, claimed that the restrictions were imposed because unauthorized disclosures “could damage the national security of the United States and place personnel in jeopardy.”
In a version of “newspeak” by the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, “1984,” Hegseth maintained that the Pentagon “remains committed to transparency to promote accountability and public trust. … The ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do.”
It’s worth noting that in New York Times v. UU.S. (1971), the Supreme Court refused to let the federal government prevent the publication of The Pentagon Papers. “Any system of prior restraints on expression,” the majority declared, faces “a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.” “The press serves the governed, not the governors,” Justice Hugo Black proclaimed.
And in Smith v. Daily Mail Publishing Co. (1979), the high court reaffirmed that a news organization cannot be punished for disseminating lawfully obtained information about a matter of public significance, even if the source was not authorized to share it, unless the government demonstrates a national security interest “of the highest order.”
In lambasting the Pentagon’s policy, National Press Club President Mike Balsamo noted that when news stories must be approved by the government, the public gets “only what officials want them to see. That should alarm every American.”
Americans “don’t want a bunch of Pravda newspapers only touting the government’s official position,” asserted Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a former Air Force brigadier general who is not seeking re-election to Congress in 2026. “A free press makes our country better. But this sounds like amateur hour. … This is so dumb I have a hard time believing it’s true.”
“Don’t Ask, We’ll Tell,” may or may not be a dumb policy, but it’s certainly damaging and dangerous. All the more so because Bacon’s Republican colleagues in the House and Senate have not denounced the regulations.
Nor have they criticized White House changes in the composition of the press pool, President Trump’s punishment of The Associated Press for failing to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America,” and his preference for calling on right-wing reporters who ask “softball” questions in official and impromptu press conferences.
If Republican politicians and the voters who support them remain silent, freedom of the press — an essential feature of democratic societies — may soon be on life support in the U.S.
Glenn C. Altschuler is The Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.