Washington-the Defense Department announced Friday night that it will institute a new “Annual Media Rotation Program” for its internal press body, effectively eliminating several important media, including NBC news, its office spaces of the pentagon in favor of other points of sale.
In addition to NBC News, The New York Times, National Public Radio and Politico must abandon their dedicated work spaces. The news organizations were found in a memorandum sent to Press’s body without being notified individually, and an attached email included a message that said, in part, “additional information will be provided at this time.”
“For more than half a century, the Pentagon Press Corps has benefited from working in individual office spaces that provide coveted access to some of the main military and civil leaders of the department,” said the memorandum that Pentagon spokesman John Ullyot He sent the Pentagon Press Association to the Pentagon.
“To expand access to the limited space of the correspondent corridor to the exits that have not previously enjoyed the privilege and value of the journalist to work from the physical office space in the Pentagon, as of February 14, 2025,” Ullyot wrote, there will be “a new annual media rotation program for those dedicated media spaces.”
In a statement, NBC News said: “We are disappointed by the decision to deny access to a transmission cabin in the pentagon that we have used for many decades. Despite the significant obstacles that this presents to our ability to gather and inform news in the national public interest, we will continue to inform with the same integrity and rigor the news of NBC have always done so. ”
The measure of Pentagon officials occurs seven days after the Senate confirmed to the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth by the narrowest margins. He followed weeks of coverage about their behavior and treatment of women, including accusations that their alcohol consumption alarmed colleagues and his second wife feared for their safety around them. Hegesh has denied accusations.
NBC News reported some of the accusations against Hegseth.
The memorandum identified the rotating organizations, selecting one of each of TV, impression, radio and online news to exchange and exit. He said that the news organizations that rotated had two weeks to evict their spaces.
The new points of sale are One America News Network, which will take the place of NBC News: The New York Post, Breitbart News Network and Huffpost.
Three of the new points of sale are conservative, while Huffpost leans progressive.
Huffpost does not have a Pentagon correspondent, and the site did not request a space, said spokeswoman Lizzie Grams.
“If the Trump administration and Secretary Hegseth are interested in a more forceful coverage of their administration of the Huffpost defense department, we are ready to deliver,” Grams said.
A spokesman for One America News said in a statement that the media has operated an office in Washington since 2013, and “hopes to have access to the physical office space in the Pentagon and will use full -time accommodations as soon as available. .
NBC News contacted the other media to comment.
The memorandum did not include more details about the process of the new “rotation program”, including the way officials chose what points of sale they needed to dislodge the office space, how the new points of sale were chosen and which are the following and how long would an office space remain before it turned to the building again.
NBC News has celebrated its dedicated pentagon work space for decades, allowing the network to transmit its journalism throughout the day and a few minutes of the last minute news. The “stand”, as they are called, is connected with technical equipment, telephone lines and a camera installed by NBC.
It is not clear if NBC News will have the technical capacity to transmit from the Pentagon once you eliminate your team from your work space.
Ullyot said that the points of sale continue to be members of the Pentagon Press Corps, which means that, in part, “they will be able to attend and cover information sessions and be considered to travel with civil and military leaders in the department as they have done previously ”
The Pentagon Press Association on Friday night issued a statement by saying: “Our resident press body has expanded greatly over the years and we have always received new members and we will continue to do so.”
“However, we are very concerned about this unprecedented DOD movement to highlight highly professional media that have covered the pentagon for decades, under republican and democratic administrations,” reads the statement. “We have asked for a meeting and we will keep everything informed.”
In her first press conference this week, the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said the administration of President Donald Trump was “opening the information room to the new media voices.” The first people they called were Mike Allen de Axios, a political journalist for a long time in a place considered general, and Matt Boyle de Breitbart, a conservative site.
Leavitt also said that his team was working “diligently to restore the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes were wrongly revoked by the previous administration.”
