A changing of the guard within the Pentagon Press Corps was initiated on 1 December 2025 in a move that any neutral observer will regard as a serious blow to objective defence reporting out of the headquarters of the US Department of Defense (DoD) – or Department of War (DoW), as it is now styled under US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The changes were precipitated in September 2025 as members of the Pentagon Press Corps were asked to sign a document asserting that “DoW information must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released by any military member, DoW civilian employee or contract employee, even if it is unclassified”.
The document effectively asked defence journalists to accept, as a condition of their access, that they could be penalised for routine newsgathering activities, such as asking a source for information they had not been explicitly authorised to discuss.
As a result, by the 15 October deadline for signing the document, there was a mass exodus from the members of the Pentagon Press Corps at the time, almost all of whom turned in their badges and relinquished their desks in the Pentagon, some of which had been occupied for more than a decade. Gone were correspondents from specialist defence titles like Breaking Defense, Defense News and Janes along with the defence correspondents from major US newspapers and TV channels, now replaced by a cadre of around 70 right-wing journalists, social media influencers and conservative commentators who have no qualms with promoting the line of Republican President Donald Trump and his defence secretary. The only media outlet that didn’t turn in its Pentagon press pass was the right-leaning, Trump-friendly One America News Network.
National Press Club President Mike Balsamo issued a statement on 15 October that read, “The National Press Club condemns the Pentagon’s unprecedented move to strip dozens of journalists of access: a sweeping action that strikes at the heart of press freedom and public accountability.
“For generations, reporters have walked the halls of the Pentagon not as guests, but as representatives of the American people — asking hard questions on behalf of those who serve in uniform. To shut them out is to shut out the public itself. This is not a matter of policy or protocol. It is an assault on transparency and an erosion of democratic norms.”
New members of the Pentagon Press Corps even include Laura Loomer: a self-styled targeter of government officials not loyal to Trump who in the past has peddled various conspiracy theories that play to Trump’s Make America Great Again support base.
In a 3 December report on its website, the DoW inevitably put a positive spin on the newly constituted Pentagon Press Corps. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson was quoted as explained that this “new media” operates differently than traditional media and that Pentagon leadership believes it is better equipped to inform a broader swath of the American public about what goes on inside the department.
“We really have seen a shift in the way people consume media,” Wilson said. “It’s not always through the mainstream outlets anymore. A lot of people are cutting the cord, and they don’t have cable news subscriptions. And a lot of young people are increasingly using social media and following their favourite influencers on YouTube, X and Instagram. It’s important for us to reach them too — to let them know about all the incredible things our warfighters are doing.”
Wilson claimed the Pentagon press agreement it required correspondents to sign was both “common sense” and “very standard”.
The convening of the new Trump-friendly Pentagon Press Corps comes at a time when multiple actions by Hegseth and his DoW would appear to require further scrutiny. On 4 December a Pentagon inspector general report on Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to send updates about US strikes in Yemen in March 2025 concluded that Hegseth “sent sensitive, non-public, operational information” over the Signal app. The report also noted that Hegseth’s use of a personal cell phone and Signal chats for official business “risks potential compromise of sensitive DoD information, which could cause harm to DoD personnel and mission objectives”.
A controversy is also building over what Hegseth ordered in relation to a follow-up attack on an alleged drug trafficking boat in the Caribbean on 2 September that reportedly killed surviving crew members after an initial attack: a strike the US Democrats claim is tantamount to a war crime.
