"Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented DefenseDepartment document, whichwarns that journalists may lose their press credentials for "soliciting" even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable."
"I've held my Pentagon press pass for 28 years. For most of that time, when I wasn't overseas in combat zones embedding with troops, I walked the halls, talking to and getting to know officers from all over the globe, at times visiting them in their offices. Did I as a reporter solicit information? Of course. It's called journalism: finding out what's really going on behind the scenes and not accepting wholesale what anygovernment or administration says."
NPR refuses to sign a new Defense Department document that warns journalists they may lose credentials for soliciting unapproved, even unclassified, information from federal employees. The policy is described as unprecedented and as preventing reporters from doing their jobs by forcing them to repeat official releases rather than investigate. Major mainstream and conservative outlets also declined to sign. Some 100 resident Pentagon press will be barred from the building if they do not sign by the stated deadline. A longtime Pentagon reporter recounts decades of on-the-record and off-the-record sourcing and gives an example from the Iraq war that contradicted official claims and informed early reporting.
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