The Trump administration’s program to shake up media representation at official briefings and press calls in Washington is set to affect the Pentagon, with credentialed media being rotated out of assigned workspaces for media newcomers.
The conservative-leaning One America News Network will replace NBC News, Breitbart will be given space held by National Public Radio, the New York Post has been offered the New York Times’ workspace and HuffPost will replace Politico.
The changes will take place on 14 February in what the Pentagon calls a new “annual media rotation program”, according to an internal memo seen by CNN.
The moves are largely symbolic as outlets are not losing access to Pentagon briefings, but are in keeping with the Trump administration’s plans to mix the access of traditional news outlets with a cohort of non-traditional news outlets, including podcasters, bloggers and TikTokers.
On Friday, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, threw the opening question to John Ashbrook, host of the Ruthless Podcast, which Leavitt described as one of the most influential podcasts in the US.
The press secretary said the White House had been flooded with more than 10,000 applications for the new “new media” seat in the cramped White House briefing room.
Pentagon spokesperson Jonathan Ullyot said in a memo to the Pentagon press association that the switch-up at the defense department’s headquarters would “broaden access to the limited space of the Correspondents’ Corridor to outlets that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon”.
However, one of the newly favored outlets, HuffPost, formerly Huffington Post, doesn’t have a Pentagon correspondent.
“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,” a spokesperson for the outlet told CNN.
A spokesperson for the New York Times said the move to expel the paper and other independent news outlets from the Pentagon’s press spaces was “a concerning development”.
“The Department of Defense has the largest discretionary budget in the government, millions of Americans in uniform under its direction and control of a vast arsenal funded by taxpayers. The Times is committed to covering the Pentagon fully and fairly. Steps designed to impede access are clearly not in the public interest,” the paper added in an email statement.
NBC News said it was “disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades” and said it would “continue to report with the same integrity and rigor” as it always had.
The partially publicly funded national radio outlet NPR told the Guardian in a statement that it would “continue to report with vigor and integrity on the transformation this administration has promised to deliver” and urged the Pentagon “to expand the offices available to press within the building so that all outlets covering the Pentagon receive equal access”.
Additionally, NPR noted that the “decision 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”.
Kevin Baron, a former vice-president of the Pentagon Press Association, called the changes “the erasure of journalism at the Pentagon” in a series of posts on X.
Baron said the existing outlets were being “replaced with fake news partisans like Breitbart, OANN, and NY Post. And HuffPo (they still exist?) for fake balance. Trump/MAGA’s fascist takeover of media coverage of the regime continues.”
