If you want to read a news story from 1999 about Janet Langhart-Cohen taking an extremely active role in the Department of Defense, you can read that story in a publication called the New York Times.
The Times is challenging a new requirement that reporters covering the military complex have an official escort, part of a broader legal challenge to the Pentagon’s press restrictions.
Hannah Natanson’s reporting anchored a package of articles from The Washington Post that won a Pulitzer on Monday, four months after agents seized her devices.
An appeals panel ruled that the Defense Department can require escorts for reporters in the building while it fights an earlier decision that overturned many of the department’s press rules.
The newspaper’s ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, said she had been given no reason for her dismissal.
The Defense Department wants to keep in place a policy requiring escorts for journalists in the building while it appeals a court decision that tossed out broader restrictions on the media.
The company said in a legal filing that the department sought to fashion an “end run” when it issued revised media rules on Monday.
The Defense Department said it would close the Pentagon’s work area for journalists, among other changes, after a judge found the existing media policy unconstitutional.
A Washington Post appeal for information about the military qualified as prohibited “solicitation,” according to defense officials.
The judge said the court itself would search the devices, which were seized from a Washington Post reporter’s home last month.