The U.S. Department of Defense will remove media offices from the Pentagon after a federal judge sided with the New York Times in a lawsuit challenging limits on journalists’ access to the building, a department official announced Monday.

An area of ​​the Pentagon known as “Correspondents’ Corridor” that journalists have used for decades to cover the U.S. military will be closed immediately, department spokesman Sean Parnell said. Journalists will eventually be able to work from an “annex” outside the building, which he said “will be available when it’s ready.” He did not offer details on how long that will take.

The Pentagon Press Association said the announcement “is a clear violation of the letter and spirit of last week’s ruling.”

“At such a critical time, we question why the Pentagon chooses to restrict vital press freedoms that help inform all Americans,” the association said.

The new policy is the latest dispute over press access under President Donald Trump’s administration, which has limited legacy media while boosting conservative and pro-Trump media.

President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a public safety roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard base March 23, 2026, in Memphis, Tennessee.
President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth during a public safety roundtable at a Tennessee Air National Guard base March 23, 2026, in Memphis, Tennessee.

AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

The Times sued the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in December, alleging that the agency’s new accreditation policy violated journalists’ constitutional rights to free speech and due process. Dozens of journalists left the building before accepting the government’s restrictions on their work.

U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman in Washington, D.C., last week sided with the newspaper. He ordered the Pentagon to reinstate the press credentials of seven Times journalists and lifted some of the agency’s restrictions on journalistic reporting.

Friedman said the “indisputable evidence” shows the policy is designed to eliminate “disadvantaged journalists” and replace them with those who are “on board and willing to serve” the government, a clear example of illegal viewpoint discrimination.

Parnell said the Department of Defense disagrees with the ruling and is filing an appeal. He said security concerns led to restrictions on press access, a claim journalists have rejected.

Under the latest Pentagon rules announced Monday, journalists will still have access to the Pentagon for press conferences and interviews arranged through the department’s public affairs team, but they will have to be escorted, Parnell wrote on social media.

The current Pentagon press corps is mostly made up of conservative media outlets who bought into the policy. Journalists at outlets that refused to consent to the new rules, including The News, have continued to report on the military.

Meanwhile, the AP is awaiting a decision from a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court of Appeals on its separate lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s administration. The AP maintains that Trump’s White House team punished him by reducing his access to presidential events because the outlet did not follow suit in renaming the Gulf of Mexico.