Aside from the general danger of reporting from a war zone, journalists may face an additional obstacle: censorship from the American military.

Back in June, the Pentagon finally released its first ever Law of War Manual, a 1000+ tome describing every combat situation an American service member can conceivably encounter while deployed. Ridiculously long and dry as last year’s Thanksgiving leftovers, the war manual drew immediate criticism for simply being inconvenient to use.

Two months later, enough people have parsed through its 1,204 pages of mind-numbing instructions to realize that the Pentagon actually snuck in some provisions to silence journalists reporting in the field.

“Reporting on military operations can be very similar to collecting intelligence or even spying,” the manual says. Likening journalism to spying and labeling journalists as “unprivileged belligerents”  was enough to cause the New York Times to write a scathing editorial against the manual, but the subsequent paragraph takes it a step further.

States may need to censor journalists’ work or take other security measures so that journalists do not reveal sensitive information to the enemy. Under the law of war, there is no special right for journalists to enter a state’s territory without its consent or to access areas of military operations without the consent of the State conducting those operations.

Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that protects freedom of information, issued an open letter demanding that the Pentagon revise its sections on journalism.

“Likening journalistic activity to spying is just the kind of ammunition certain repressive countries like Iran, Syria, and China would seek out to support their practices of censorship and criminalization of journalists,” the group argued.

The letter also points out that the manual violates several UN provisions. The Pentagon hasn’t made any changes to its manual or responded to the letter.

Freedom of speech is not something any American takes lightly or for granted. Did the Pentagon cross a line by equating war correspondents to spies, or are they right to control information in a war zone?