Stars and Stripes is the official newspaper of the U.S. Department of Defense, but it has always made independent editorial decisions — until now. The Defense Department has announced that Stars and Stripes will now be under the control of the Pentagon, which plans to move the newspaper’s coverage away from what it calls “woke distractions.” Many critics say this is just the latest in the Trump administration’s crackdown on press freedoms.
The Defense Department will be “returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” said Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell in a statement on X. The Pentagon is going to “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” Stars and Stripes will now highlight “warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability.” It will also no longer publish newswire reports from outlets like The Associated Press, according to Parnell.
This marks a significant shift for Stars and Stripes, which was first published during the Civil War and has been “editorially independent from Defense Department officials since a congressional mandate in the 1990s,” said The Hill. But the change “follows the Trump administration’s restrictions on Pentagon journalists,” most of whom have chosen to “give up working from the building rather than sign on to new, constricting rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.” The news also comes after The Washington Post reported that applicants to Stars and Stripes are “being asked how they would support the president’s policy priorities.”
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The government additionally published a Federal Register rule that “struck previous policy regarding Stars and Stripes’ business operations, including a requirement for a civilian editor and an independent ombudsman,” said The Guardian. All of these updates have drawn “immediate censure from press freedom groups as the latest attempt by the Pentagon to stifle criticism and control what is written about it.”
American troops “deserve credible, trustworthy news guaranteed by the First Amendment, a cornerstone of the Constitution they defend,” said Tim Richardson, the journalism and disinformation program director for PEN America, in a statement. The Pentagon’s action “tramples both the First Amendment and the congressional mandate that the publication remain editorially independent.” Stars and Stripes itself raised similar concerns. The “people who risk their lives in defense of the Constitution have earned the right to the press freedoms of the First Amendment,” said Stars and Stripes Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin in an article for the newspaper.
What next?
Amid the takeover, there is “growing unease among the staff about the Pentagon's plans for the paper and its original reporting,” said Business Insider. Many staffers are also reportedly worried about their jobs after it was “reported the Pentagon plans to staff Stars and Stripes with more active-duty personnel.” This could potentially mean “layoffs for civilian reporters and fewer stories that spotlight problems.”
If the Department of Defense “begins to dictate what the coverage should be, what the ‘news’ should be in Stars and Stripes,” the newspaper “loses its credibility and harms its mission to provide fair and impartial news to the military community,” said Stars and Stripes Ombudsman Jacqueline Smith to Business Insider. Smith also published an op-ed calling for more independent assistance for the newspaper.
