Media outlets and organizations are preparing for a battle over Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s new rules restricting press access at the Pentagon.

Legal experts and media advocates say the new policy appears to mark an unprecedented attack on press freedom, pointing to a provision that restricts the release of even unclassified information.

The Pentagon says media outlets are misconstruing the new rules. Hegseth, who has repeatedly accused journalists of attempting to “sabotage” President Trump’s agenda, wrote on the social platform X the move would establish that “the ‘press’ does not run the Pentagon — the people do.”

To obtain or renew a Pentagon pass, according to a 17-page memo released on Sept. 19, reporters must sign a contract that recognizes that department information must be “approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released, even if it is unclassified.”

Those who refuse to sign the form, or do so and then violate the terms, could lose their access to the Pentagon and all U.S. military facilities. Reporters have been told that they must sign the form or their passes could be revoked within two weeks.

The Hill is coordinating its response with the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which publicly announced its opposition to the new restrictions, asking for a delay in implementation and clarifications around the new policy.

On Wednesday, the group said Defense officials had agreed to meet to discuss concerns about the First Amendment rights of journalists. In a statement, Gabe Rottman, the committee’s vice president of policy, said the Pentagon’s policy, in its current form, “could be wielded to silence independent reporting in the public interest about the Pentagon and our national defense.”

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), meanwhile, has........

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