The Department of Defense, under Secretary Pete Hegseth’s leadership, announced changes to its in-house press corp to create a new “annual media rotation program,” which effectively removes those outlets from spaces dedicated to them.
The Pentagon said NBC News, the New York Times, National Public Radio, and Politico must vacate their dedicated workspaces. The move will elevate relatively small news organizations that, save for one, are friendly toward President Donald Trump.
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“In order to broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents’ Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalist value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon, beginning February 14, 2025,” a memo Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot sent to the Pentagon Press Association, reads.
“To be clear, the outlets that vacate the spaces loaned to them” by the defense secretary “will remain as full members of the Pentagon Press Corps,” Ullyot wrote. “They will continue to enjoy the same media access to the Pentagon and will be able to attend and cover briefings and be considered for travel with civilian and military leaders in the Department as they have previously. The only change will be giving up their physical workspaces in the building to allow new outlets to have their turn to become resident members of the Pentagon Press Corps.”
The new outlets rotating in are One America News Network, the New York Post, Breitbart News Network, and HuffPost. The first three news outlets listed are conservative, while HuffPost is progressive.
HuffPost does not have a Pentagon correspondent, nor did they request a space in the Pentagon.
“If the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are interested in more hard-hitting coverage of their stewardship of the Defense Department from HuffPost, we are ready to deliver,” Huffpost spokesperson Lizzie Grams said.
Pentagon officials chose one outlet “from each press medium,” print, online, radio, and TV to let go of their existing space for one years’ time.
The Pentagon Press Association issued a statement saying they were “greatly troubled by this unprecedented move by DOD to single out highly professional media who have covered the Pentagon for decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations.”
The National Press Club, which advocates for freedom of the press, said in a statement they were “deeply troubled” by the Pentagon’s announcement.
“The National Press Club is deeply concerned by the Defense Department’s decision to remove certain media organizations from their dedicated spaces in the Pentagon,” National Press Club President Mike Balsamo said in a statement. “Any action that restricts the ability of journalists to report on the operations of the U.S. government should alarm all who value transparency and press freedom.”
The networks removed from their spaces expressed dissatisfaction with the move. NPR said in a statement that the move “interferes with the ability of millions of Americans to directly hear from Pentagon leadership, and with NPR’s public interest mission to serve Americans who turn to our network of local public media stations in all 50 states.”
Breitbart was selected as a radio outlet to replace NPR’s spot, but the outlet does not have much of a radio operation or presence. They do have a distribution deal with SiriusXM and one podcast called Breitbart Daily News, but it is far smaller than NPR’s operations nationwide.
According to NBC News, they held their dedicated Pentagon workspace for decades and their dedicated “booth” is hardwired with technical equipment, phone lines, and a camera installed by NBC. NBC News said it is unclear if they will have the technical capability to broadcast from the Pentagon once the outlet clears out their equipment from the workspace.
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The move from the Pentagon mirrors that of the White House. At her first press briefing this week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump administration was “opening up the briefing room to new media voices.” The first person she called on was Mike Allen of Axios, a site that is only a few years old but is generally considered mainstream, before she moved to Matt Boyle from Breitbart.
The move additionally comes just one week after Hegseth’s rocky path to confirmation following weeks of new coverage about his drinking habits and alleged sexual assault of multiple women.