‘Pete Hegseth Has United the Media!’ Only One Outlet Has Agreed to Pentagon’s New Press Rules as Fox News, CNN and More Refuse to Comply

Pete Hegseth‘s Defense Department has threatened to revoke press credentials of news organization that do not agree to restrictive new coverage rules — and says it may bar journalists who don’t agree to abide by the rules from physical access to the Pentagon’s grounds. But more than three dozen news orgs have said they are refusing to sign on to the requirements.

On Tuesday, in a joint statement five major TV news outlets — ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News — said they were not agreeing to the new rules. The Pentagon has told reporters they must sign an agreement for the new rules by Tuesday or turn in their press passes by Wednesday.

According to the Defense Department’s press office, which outlined the new rules last month, reporters covering the Pentagon must sign a pledge not to obtain or use unauthorized material (even if the information is unclassified). If they do not, they will potentially be barred from the Pentagon.

“Today, we join virtually every other news organization in declining to agree to the Pentagon’s new requirements, which would restrict journalists’ ability to keep the nation and the world informed of important national security issues,” the networks said in the statement. “The policy is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and independent press.”

The five networks join a number of other news orgs that have already said they won’t agree to the new rules being imposed by Hegseth, a former Fox News host. Those include the New York Times, AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, NewsNation and the Hill, along with conservative-leaning outlets like Newsmax and the Washington Examiner.

At press time, only one outlet has said it plans to sign on to the new rules announced by the Pentagon, which the Trump administration now calls the “U.S. Department of War”: pro-Trump network One America News Network (OANN).

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Here’s the current full list of news outlets that have refused to sign the Pentagon’s new rules, as compiled by the Washington Post:

        ABC News
    AL-Monitor
    Associated Press
    The Atlantic
    Aviation Week
    Axios
    Bloomberg News
    Breaking Defense
    C4ISRNET
    CBS News
    CNN
    Defense Daily
    Defense News
    Defense One
    The Economist
    Federal Times
    The Financial Times
    Fox News
    The Guardian
    The Hill
    HuffPost
    Military Times
    MSNBC
    NBC News
    The New York Times
    Newsmax
    NewsNation
    NPR
    PBS NewsHour
    Politico
    RealClearPolitics
    Reuters
    Task & Purpose
    The Wall Street Journal
    The Washington Examiner
    The Washington Post
    The Washington Times
    WTOP