Two major news operations owned by Nexstar Media Group will not agree to a more-restrictive access policy that places limitations on how journalists can request information from military employees.
On Tuesday, a source familiar with the matter confirmed to The Desk that cable news outlet NewsNation and political affairs publication The Hill have decided not to endorse the new order, which will be required to maintain access to the Pentagon in the coming weeks.
NewsNation and The Hill join a growing list of other organizations that have rejected the new policy, including peer news operations ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, Newsmax and CNN; newspapers the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Washington Times; wire services Reuters and the Associated Press; and other outlets like HuffPost (the Huffington Post) and NPR.
Only one operation — Herring Networks-owned One America News (OAN) — has agreed to sign the order.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, several network news outlets said the new policy “is without precedent and threatens core journalistic protections,” and said their reporters will continue to cover the U.S. military in a way that upholds “the principles of a free and independent press.”
NewsNation was not among the signatories of the joint statement released by broadcast and cable news outlets, but a source familiar with the operations of the channel said its journalists were among those refusing to sign the order. The source confirmed the same for The Hill, which Nexstar acquired four years ago. The Hill and NewsNation collaborate on some TV programming.
The new policy requires journalists and their news outlets to promise they won’t solicit non-public information from Department of Defense (Department of War) employees in order to maintain their press passes at the headquarters of the U.S. military.
The edict comes amid a broader crackdown on press freedom within the Trump administration, and follows months of revolving door antics at the Pentagon that found several news outlets evicted from their offices within the building’s Correspondents’ Corridor.
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