A federal judge ruled that the Department of War‘s restrictive press policy was unlawful, voiding most of its provisions.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, ruled in favor of the New York Times’s lawsuit on First Amendment grounds. In his view, the restrictive measures violated reporters’ right to cover the military.
“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” Friedman wrote in his ruling.
“Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech,” he added. “That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”
Friedman acknowledged the Pentagon’s argument, that war plans and operational security needed to be maintained, but argued the importance of an informed public took precedence. He also referenced recent conflicts in Iran and Venezuela to argue for the urgency of the press policies’ termination.
“But especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran, it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete, and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election,” he wrote.
In October, the Pentagon laid out new restrictions for reporters, including a ban on reporters asking anyone in the Department of War for any information that hasn’t been approved for release, and barring reporters from accessing swathes of the Pentagon without an escort.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER, ASSOCIATED PRESS, AND NEW YORK TIMES SAY THEY WON’T SIGN PENTAGON PRESS RULES
The Washington Examiner, Washington Post, the Atlantic, Reuters, NPR, Newsmax, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Associated Press, and the New York Times all refused to sign on to the new policy, resulting in their expulsion from the Pentagon’s press room.
“We do not plan to sign the Pentagon document. The Washington Examiner does not sign agreements with people we cover in our reporting in any other area, and we do not plan to make an exception in this case. The Department of War will set its rules and we will continue to provide our readers with strong independent news reporting,” Washington Examiner Editor-in-Chief Hugo Gurdon said in October.
