Washington NBC News and other major news organizations will no longer be housed in Pentagon offices after the Department of Defense announced Friday night that it will implement a new annual media rotation program for its in-house press corps.
Politico, National Public Radio, The New York Times, and NBC News are also required to leave their designated workspaces. Without being contacted directly, the news organizations were informed of the new direction in a letter emailed to the press corps. The email that accompanied the memo stated, in part, that no further information will be supplied at this time.
According to a message given to the Pentagon Press Association by Pentagon spokesperson John Ullyot, the Pentagon Press Corps has benefited for more than 50 years from operating out of separate office premises that offer desired and open access to some of the Department’s top military and civilian executives.
Ullyot wrote that starting February 14, 2025, a new Annual Media Rotation Program will be implemented for those dedicated media spaces in order to expand access to the Correspondents Corridor’s limited space to outlets that have not previously benefited from the privilege and journalistic value of working from physical office space in the Pentagon.
“We’re disappointed by the decision to deny us access to a broadcasting booth at the Pentagon that we’ve used for many decades,” NBC News stated in a statement. We will continue to report with the same rigor and integrity that NBC News has always maintained, despite the major challenges this poses to our capacity to obtain and cover news in the national public interest.
Pentagon authorities took this action seven days after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was narrowly confirmed by the Senate. It came after weeks of media attention over his actions and treatment of women, including claims that his drinking scared coworkers and that his second wife was afraid for her safety in his presence. The accusations have been refuted by Hegseth.
Some of the accusations against Hegseth were covered by NBC News.
The memo chose one organization from each of the following media to switch in and out of: TV, print, radio, and online news. It stated that the news outlets that were rotating out had two weeks to leave their locations.
The New York Post, Breitbart News Network, HuffPost, and One America News Network, which will replace NBC News, are the new outlets that will be alternating in.
HuffPost leans progressive, but three of the new sites are conservative.
According to spokesperson Lizzie Grams, HuffPost does not have a correspondent at the Pentagon and did not apply for a seat.
We are prepared to provide more incisive coverage of the Trump administration’s and Secretary Hegseth’s management of the Defense Department if they are interested, Grams stated.
“This 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,” NPR stated in a statement. “NPR will keep covering the change this Administration has pledged to bring about with force and integrity. To ensure that all media outlets covering the Pentagon have equitable access, NPR asks the Pentagon to increase the number of offices available for reporters within the structure.
According to a statement from a One America News representative, the news organization has had a bureau in Washington since 2013. It is eager to have access to actual office space inside the Pentagon and plans to make full-time use of the facilities as soon as they become available.
NBC News requested comments from the other news organizations.
Additional information regarding the new rotation program’s process was not included in the memo. This included how officials decided which outlets needed to leave office space first, how new outlets were selected and which would come next, and how long an outlet would be without office space before being rotated back into the building.
For decades, NBC events has maintained a dedicated Pentagon office, which allows the network to report on breaking events within minutes and throughout the day. NBC has installed a camera, phone lines, and technical equipment that are connected into the so-called booth.
After NBC News removes its equipment from its workstation, it is uncertain if it will have the technical capacity to broadcast from the Pentagon.
Ullyot pointed out that the departing media outlets are still part of the Pentagon press corps, which means they will be able to attend and report on briefings and be given the opportunity to travel with the Department’s military and civilian leaders as they have in the past.
In a statement released Friday night, the Pentagon journalist Association said, “We have always welcomed new members and will continue to do so. Our resident press corps has greatly expanded over the years.”
But this unusual action by DOD to single out highly skilled reporters who have covered the Pentagon for decades, throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations, deeply disturbs us, the statement said. We’ve requested a meeting and will update everyone.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated that the administration of President Donald Trump was allowing new media voices to speak in the briefing room during her maiden news conference this week. She began by interviewing Matt Boyle of the conservative website Breitbart and Mike Allen of Axios, a longtime political journalist at a mainstream website.
Leavitt added that her staff was making every effort to reinstate the press passes of the 440 journalists whose passes had been mistakenly cancelled by the previous government.