The Pentagon's correspondents' corridor — the hallway where credentialed reporters have maintained offices since 1942 — remained closed on Friday for the third consecutive day. The closure, which the Department of Defense described as "permanent" in a memo issued Tuesday, followed the Pentagon's decision to shut the hallway and dare the court to stop it after losing a press access ruling earlier in the week. [1]

The New York Times filed a contempt motion on Wednesday, arguing that the corridor closure violates the spirit and possibly the letter of the court's prior ruling on press access. Attorney Theodore Boutrous, representing the Times, called the closure "brazen defiance of judicial authority." The Pentagon has not filed a response. The court has not set a hearing date. The silence from both the government and the judiciary is the operating condition. [1]

Reporters who previously accessed the corridor now enter the Pentagon through a visitor screening process that adds approximately forty-five minutes to arrival time and requires an escort to reach briefing rooms. The practical effect is to make daily coverage of the Defense Department significantly harder — not by banning journalists, which would trigger constitutional challenges, but by making the logistics so burdensome that coverage thins through attrition. [2]

The strategy — close the space, ignore the court, wait for the news cycle — depends on the press treating its own eviction as a story with a shelf life. Three days in, the shelf life is being tested.

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London