TL;DR
Three weeks after a federal judge compared Pentagon press restrictions to Kafka, the Correspondents' Corridor is still dark and journalists still need escorts to move inside the building.
MSM Perspective
Politico and The Washington Post covered the March 23 closure announcement; the National Press Club issued a formal condemnation.
X Perspective
Pentagon correspondents on X describe the escort-only policy as the Defense Department's method of technically complying with a court order while nullifying its purpose.
The Pentagon's Correspondents' Corridor remains closed. Three weeks after Judge Paul Friedman invoked Kafka and Catch-22 to describe the access regime the Defense Department erected after his March 20 ruling, nothing has changed [1]. The corridor where credentialed journalists worked for decades is dark. Reporters operate from an unfinished external annex [2].
The closure began March 23, when Pentagon Press Secretary Sean Parnell announced the corridor's immediate shutdown and the relocation of press workspace to an annex facility [3]. The move came three days after Judge Friedman vacated key security restrictions and ordered the restoration of seven New York Times press passes [4].
Movement inside the Pentagon still requires military escorts. The shuttle bus to the library-area press space was initially restricted before the Defense Department relented under public pressure [5]. The National Press Club condemned the closure as a further restriction on reporter access [6]. The Trump administration has said it will appeal the original ruling. No new compliance order has been issued. The Pentagon continues to run a wartime operation from a building that has locked out the journalists assigned to cover it.
-- ANNA WEBER, Berlin
Sources & X Posts
News Sources
X Posts