WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Friday revised its manual for interpreting the international laws of war, adding language to protect reporters engaged in battlefield news gathering.

But the Defense Department’s overhaul of its Law of War Manual left unchanged other disputed sections that scholarly critics have called inaccurate and dangerous — including rules for weighing when it is lawful to fire on a military target even though civilians are present.

The manual, issued last year, is the latest in a series of official guides to rules for warfare tracing back to a set of concise rules, known as the “Lieber Code,” that President Abraham Lincoln issued to Union soldiers during the Civil War. But last year’s version, which is about 1,200 pages, has attracted controversy.

Its section about war correspondents portrayed journalism as close to spying, said reporters should get authorization to enter a war zone, and spoke of censoring their work. And it stated that if reporters relayed information that could be useful in combat, that “could constitute taking a direct part in hostilities” — meaning it would become lawful to intentionally kill them.