Striking Down Pentagon Press Limits, Judge Vindicates Independent Journalism

[!tip] 中文标题 联邦法官力挺新闻自由，推翻特朗普政府对五角大楼记者的限制

[!abstract] 摘要 联邦法官保罗·L·弗里德曼裁定，特朗普政府实施的五角大楼记者准入政策违宪。该政策要求记者签署协议，不得获取未经政府批准的信息，导致《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》等主流媒体及福克斯新闻等保守派媒体集体退回记者证。取而代之的是一批特朗普的忠诚支持者组成的“新记者团”。法官指出，该政策基于“编辑观点”进行歧视，旨在排除独立报道的记者，违反了第一修正案（观点歧视）和第五修正案（模糊且任意）。判决强调，在国家安全和战争时期，公众获取多元信息以监督政府至关重要。此案可能面临上诉。

关键要点

• 联邦法官保罗·L·弗里德曼裁定，特朗普政府实施的五角大楼记者准入政策（要求记者签署协议不获取未经批准的信息）违反了宪法第一和第五修正案。
• 该政策导致包括主流媒体和保守派媒体在内的大量记者退回证件，取而代之的是一个由特朗普忠诚支持者（如劳拉·卢默、马特·盖兹等）组成的“新记者团”。
• 法官认定该政策的核心是“观点歧视”，其真实目的是排除不愿只发布官方“喂料”的独立记者，而非基于政治立场。
• 判决强调，在国家安全和战争时期（如介入委内瑞拉、与伊朗交战），公众获取多元信息以进行知情决策和监督政府比以往任何时候都更重要。
• 此案仅为初步胜利，鉴于最高法院由共和党任命法官主导，特朗普政府可能上诉并最终胜诉。

中文全文

一名联邦法官周五有力地捍卫了独立报道且不受政府控制的宪法自由，推翻了特朗普政府前所未有的对记者的限制，这些限制已使五角大楼大厅里传统的记者在战争扩大的时期销声匿迹。

“第一修正案的一个主要目的是使媒体能够出版其想要出版的内容，公众能够阅读其选择的内容，不受任何官方禁令的约束，”华盛顿联邦地区法院的法官保罗·L·弗里德曼写道。

“起草第一修正案的人们相信，国家的安全需要自由的媒体和知情的民众，而这种安全因政府压制政治言论而受到威胁，”他继续说道。“这一原则在近250年来维护了国家的安全。现在绝不能放弃。”

在他长达40页的裁决中，弗里德曼法官剖析了国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯实施的政策，该政策自10月起，仅向签署协议承诺不获取特朗普政府未批准发布的信息的人发放五角大楼记者证。

广泛的新闻媒体拒绝了这一要求。其中包括主流出版物如《纽约时报》、《华盛顿邮报》和《华尔街日报》，广播新闻节目和通讯社，以及保守倾向的媒体如福克斯新闻、Newsmax、《华盛顿观察家报》和《每日来电》。

当记者们交回他们的证件时，一个新的记者团取代了他们的位置。证件发给了特朗普的忠诚支持者，如活动家劳拉·卢默；前国会议员马特·盖兹（特朗普总统最初想让他担任司法部长）；保守派偷拍视频组织创始人詹姆斯·奥基夫；MyPillow的迈克·林德尔（他创办了一个数字新闻网站）；以及少数其他评论员、阴谋论者和大多是特朗普先生毫不掩饰的政治支持者的媒体。

一种新型的记者团，包括前国会议员兼特朗普盟友马特·盖兹，取代了交回五角大楼记者证的记者。图片来源...达斯汀·钱伯斯为《纽约时报》拍摄

《纽约时报》以其国家安全记者朱利安·E·巴恩斯的名义提起诉讼。引人注目的是，多家大型新闻媒体拒绝冒险加入诉讼，尽管五角大楼记者协会提交了一份法庭之友陈述书。

对新闻自由来说，这是一段严峻的时期。五角大楼由其首席发言人肖恩·帕内尔监督的政策，只是特朗普先生及其政府挑战或破坏独立新闻规范的方式之一，他们惩罚他们认为具有批评性的新闻文章，并寻求对报道的更大控制。

特朗普先生对业务涉及政府的公司所拥有的新闻机构提起了诽谤诉讼，并对包括《纽约时报》在内的其他媒体提起诉讼或威胁要起诉。司法部长帕姆·邦迪撤销了对卷入泄密调查的记者的保护，联邦调查局搜查了一名《华盛顿邮报》记者的家。特朗普任命的联邦通信委员会主席布伦丹·卡尔威胁要因其不喜欢的报道而吊销执照。

在此背景下，法官对导致几乎所有主流新闻媒体持证记者撤离五角大楼的规则的驳斥，至少目前，是对宪法新闻自由的有力肯定。

法官写道，该政策违反了第一修正案，因为它构成了观点歧视且不合理，并违反了第五修正案，因为它模糊不清，并授予官员过多的任意权力，可以随意施予恩惠或惩罚。

“可能导致或可能不会导致记者被视为‘安全风险’的考虑因素包括获取或试图获取部门未批准发布的任何信息，无论该信息是否属于机密，”法官写道。“但显而易见的是，获取和试图获取信息是记者的工作。记者获取信息的主要方式之一是提问。”

这项裁决只是第一步。弗里德曼法官由民主党人比尔·克林顿总统任命。特朗普政府在低级法院的法官面前输掉了许多案件，但最终在上诉中获胜，尤其是在由共和党任命的超级多数主导的最高法院。

但裁决的核心部分——其认定该政策旨在并产生了违宪的观点歧视——比美国民主中的左翼与右翼政治斗争更为深刻。

特朗普政府辩称，其政策不可能具有歧视性，因为保守派媒体的记者也拒绝签署。法官写道，这没错，但无关紧要。他说，赫格塞斯歧视的观点不是自由主义或保守主义，而是新闻必须独立的观点。

国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯周四向记者发表讲话。图片来源...曼德尔·恩根/法新社—盖蒂图片社

“记录证据支持这样的结论：该政策并非基于政治观点进行歧视，而是基于编辑观点——即个人或组织是否愿意只发布对部门领导有利或由部门领导‘喂料’的报道，”他写道。

法官总结道，“无可争议的证据”表明该政策的“真实目的和实际效果：淘汰不受欢迎的记者——那些在部门看来‘没有上船且不愿服务’的记者——并用‘上船’的新闻实体取代他们。”

引用的引文来自五角大楼新闻秘书金斯利·威尔逊在12月2日简报会上的声明，她在会上赞许地告诉重组后的记者团，它是由“上船并愿意为我们总司令服务”的人组成的。

弗里德曼法官称这是“观点歧视，毫无疑问。”他还将其描述为五角大楼与记者关系的“巨变”，过去，即使记者批评国防部或发布像越南战争期间的五角大楼文件那样的机密信息，他们的证件也并未被实际吊销。

“法院认识到必须保护国家安全，必须保护我们部队的安全，必须保护战争计划，”他总结道，并补充说，这项裁决是在一个特别关键的时刻做出的。

“特别是考虑到国家最近介入委内瑞拉以及正在与伊朗进行的战争，”他写道，“公众比以往任何时候都更需要从多种角度获取关于其政府正在做什么的信息——以便公众能够支持政府政策，如果他们想支持的话；抗议，如果他们想抗议的话；并根据充分、完整和公开的信息决定在下次选举中投票给谁。”

原文

A federal judge on Friday forcefully defended the constitutional freedom to report independently and without government control, striking down the Trump administration’s unprecedented restrictions on reporters that have emptied the Pentagon’s halls of traditional journalists at a time of expanding war.

“A primary purpose of the First Amendment is to enable the press to publish what it will and the public to read what it chooses, free of any official proscription,” wrote Judge Paul L. Friedman of the Federal District Court in Washington.

“Those who drafted the First Amendment believed that the nation’s security requires a free press and an informed people and that such security is endangered by governmental suppression of political speech,” he continued. “That principle has preserved the nation’s security for almost 250 years. It must not be abandoned now.”

In his 40-page ruling, Judge Friedman dissected the policy imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has made Pentagon press passes available since October only to people who signed agreements not to solicit information the Trump administration has not approved for release.

A broad range of news outlets balked at the requirement. They included mainstream publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, broadcast news programs and wire services, and conservative-leaning outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, The Washington Examiner and The Daily Caller.

When the reporters turned in their credentials, a new press corps took their place. Passes were issued to Trump loyalists like Laura Loomer, an activist; Matt Gaetz, a former congressman President Trump initially wanted to make attorney general; James O’Keefe, the founder of a conservative sting video group; Mike Lindell of MyPillow, who has started a digital news site; and a handful of other commentators, conspiracy theorists and outlets that are mostly unabashed political boosters of Mr. Trump.

A new type of press corps, which included Matt Gaetz, a former congressman and Trump ally, took the place of the reporters who turned in their Pentagon press passes. Credit... Dustin Chambers for The New York Times

The New York Times filed suit in the name of one of its national security reporters, Julian E. Barnes. Strikingly, multiple large news outlets declined to risk joining the litigation, although the Pentagon Press Association filed a friend-of-the-court brief.

It has been a grim time for press freedom. The Pentagon’s policy, overseen by its chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, is just one way in which Mr. Trump and his administration have challenged or undermined norms of independent journalism, penalizing news organizations for articles they deem to be critical and seeking greater control over coverage.

Mr. Trump has filed defamation lawsuits against news organizations owned by corporations with business before the government and sued or threatened to sue others, including The Times. Attorney General Pam Bondi rescinded protections for reporters caught up in leak investigations, and the F.B.I. searched a Washington Post reporter’s home. The chairman of the F.C.C., Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, has threatened to pull licenses over coverage he dislikes.

Against that backdrop, the judge’s repudiation of rules that led to the exodus of credentialed Pentagon reporters from virtually every mainstream news outlet stands, at least for now, as a vigorous affirmation of constitutional press freedom.

The policy, the judge wrote, violated the First Amendment because it amounted to viewpoint discrimination and was unreasonable, and violated the Fifth Amendment because it was vague and granted too much arbitrary power to officials who could dispense favors or punishment at will.

“The considerations that may or may not lead to a reporter being deemed ‘a security or safety risk’ include obtaining or attempting to obtain any information that the department has not approved for release, regardless of whether that information is classified,” the judge wrote. “But to state the obvious, obtaining and attempting to obtain information is what journalists do. A primary way in which journalists obtain information is by asking questions.”

The ruling is just a first step. Judge Friedman was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The Trump administration has lost many cases before judges at the lower court level, only to prevail on appeal, especially before the Supreme Court, which is dominated by a Republican-appointed supermajority.

But the core part of the ruling — its finding that the policy was aimed at and produced unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination — cuts deeper than left-versus-right politics in American democracy.

The Trump administration had argued that its policy could not be discriminatory because journalists at conservative outlets were among those who refused to sign it. True enough, the judge wrote, but beside the point. The viewpoint Mr. Hegseth was discriminating against, he said, was not liberalism or conservatism, but the view that journalism must be independent.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaking to reporters on Thursday. Credit... Mandel Ngan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“The record evidence supports the conclusion that the policy discriminates not based on political viewpoint but rather based on editorial viewpoint — that is, whether the individual or organization is willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership,” he wrote.

The judge concluded that “the undisputed evidence” showed the policy’s “true purpose and practical effect: to weed out disfavored journalists — those who were not, in the department’s view, ‘on board and willing to serve’ — and replace them with news entities that are.”

The cited quotation came from a statement by the press secretary for the Pentagon, Kingsley Wilson, at a Dec. 2 briefing in which she approvingly told the reconstituted press corps that it was composed of people “on board and willing to serve our commander in chief.”

Judge Friedman called this “viewpoint discrimination, full stop.” He also described it as a “sea change” in the Pentagon’s relationship with journalists who, in the past, did not have their credentials effectively revoked even when they were critical of the Defense Department or published classified information like the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

“The court recognizes that national security must be protected, the security of our troops must be protected, and war plans must be protected,” he concluded, adding that the ruling was coming at a particularly crucial time.

“Especially in light of the country’s recent incursion into Venezuela and its ongoing war with Iran,” he wrote, “it is more important than ever that the public have access to information from a variety of perspectives about what its government is doing — so that the public can support government policies, if it wants to support them; protest, if it wants to protest; and decide based on full, complete and open information who they are going to vote for in the next election.”