Access Denied

The Pentagon's war reporting rules are the toughest ever for journalists, reports Neil Hickey, citing interviews with more than a score of foreign editors, Pentagon correspondents and other journalists. "Bush administration policy has kept reporters from combat units in a fashion unimagined in Vietnam, and one that's more restrictive even than the burdensome constraints on media in the Persian Gulf," he writes. "And at the Pentagon in Washington, where massive quantities of battle reports arrived hourly, Defense Department spokespersons spoonfed correspondents a calibrated daily ration of news about the military operations that has left those journalists frustrated and mutinous."