The newspaper was declared independent. The people defending that independence were declared insubordinate.
Stars and Stripes has always been an odd institution. The Pentagon helps pay for it and its journalists are government employees, but it is not supposed to be a Pentagon newsletter. Its purpose is to give American service members, particularly those overseas, something resembling the independent news they would receive if they were home.
That distinction matters because a military public-affairs office tells troops what their commanders want them to know, while a newspaper also tells them things their commanders might prefer not to discuss: defective equipment, rotten housing, exhausted crews, abusive commanders, suicide, sexual assault, inadequate medical care or the actual condition of a ship whose deployment has gone on too long. The military requires discipline, but it does not require ignorance.
This conflict is hardly new. In 1988, the Government Accountability Office investigated hundreds of complaints involving censorship, news management and military influence at Stars and Stripes. It found genuine censorship and inappropriate interference, particularly in the Pacific edition. The rules written afterward were unusually clear because somebody had already demonstrated why they were necessary. Pentagon policy required a free flow of news without censorship or management, specifically prohibited the calculated withholding of unfavorable news and warned that allowing command or public-affairs staffs to shape editorial policy created an unacceptable conflict of interest.³
In other words, the Pentagon had already learned the lesson once.
During Trump’s first term, it tried a more straightforward solution. The Defense Department proposed eliminating roughly $15.5 million in support for Stars and Stripes and instructed the organization to prepare to stop publishing. Congress, veterans and military families objected loudly enough that Trump reversed his own Pentagon and kept the paper alive.⁴ Credit him for reversing it, but the episode also demonstrated a basic problem with closing a newspaper: everybody notices.
The second Trump administration has taken a subtler route. Keep Stars and Stripes. Keep the masthead and the website. Keep reassuring everyone about editorial independence. Just change the machinery underneath it.
In January, the Pentagon removed the regulation governing Stars and Stripes from the Code of Federal Regulations and said the matter could instead be handled through internal Pentagon policy. On the same day, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced that the newspaper would be redirected away from “woke distractions” and toward warfighting, weapons, fitness, lethality and survivability.⁵
There is something wonderfully circular about an administration announcing what an independent newspaper ought to cover. Ordinarily we call the people who make those decisions editors.
In March came another Pentagon plan restricting commercial wire stories and syndicated material and requiring the newspaper to operate consistently with “good order and discipline.” That phrase makes perfect sense on an aircraft carrier. It makes me nervous in a newsroom. Almost anything embarrassing to a military command can be described as harmful to morale or discipline. A story saying sailors are exhausted may undermine confidence in a deployment. A report about a terrible commander may undermine confidence in command. Reporting that equipment does not work may undermine confidence in readiness.⁶
Sometimes undermining misplaced confidence is what journalism is for.
Then there was Jacqueline Smith, the independent ombudsman whose peculiar job was to watch the Pentagon for interference with Stars and Stripes and tell Congress about it. After publicly warning about increasing Pentagon control, she was dismissed in April. Smith has sued, alleging retaliation; the government disputes that claim, and the courts have not decided it.⁷ Still, the organizational flaw is pretty easy to spot. A watchdog can be independent, or management can be able to fire her when she barks too loudly. It is difficult to arrange both.
This summer the Pentagon installed Navy Capt. William Urban, an active-duty public-affairs officer, as deputy publisher. Urban says he supports editorial independence, and there is no public evidence that he personally has suppressed a story. The important question is not whether Urban is a good officer or a reasonable man.