Pentagon turns Stars and Stripes into a newspaper in name only | Opinion

To paraphrase one of Ronald Reagan’s more memorable lines: There he goes again.

Six years ago, as President Donald Trump was nearing the end of his first term in the nation’s highest office, I sounded the alarm about his attempt to shutter Stars and Stripes, the taxpayer-funded, editorially independent newspaper that has served the nation’s military for more than 160 years.

After USA TODAY broke the news, the bipartisan public backlash was so great that Trump had to rescind the mothballing order.

“The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch,” Trump wrote, misidentifying the daily news outlet as a periodical. “It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”

Now that he’s back in office, Trump is fulfilling that promise – but in a way only George Orwell could fully appreciate.

Pentagon tears up Stars and Stripes' editorial independence

Team Trump appears bent on preserving Stars and Stripes as a NINO – a newspaper in name only ‒ while upending its mission to provide "unbiased, credible news to America's military.”

The Pentagon’s recent decision to fire Stars and Stripes ombudsman Jacqueline Smith was just the latest indication of the administration’s true intent: to neuter the troops’ watchdog by eliminating its editorial independence.

Forget critical coverage of issues that matter to troops and their families, such as medical care and housing allowances. Instead of such “woke content,” in the words of Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, Stripes will favor a “focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.”

Does it seem to you that fighting men and women far from home might prefer to unwind with something other than an arms catalogue? That the Pentagon already has enough public relations people?

You are not alone. Over the past few months, Smith’s ombudsman column has chronicled reader complaints about the Pentagon’s elimination of the funny pages as well as anger over the clear menace to the newspaper’s editorial integrity.

What we are fighting for when we fight

Chalk this up as another unforced error by a department of ill-conceived wars. Stars and Stripes has arguably been one of the most powerful weapons our troops have carried into battle. That’s because it embodies a fundamentally American value: the right to speak truth to power.

It is a newspaper funded by the Pentagon that is free to criticize the Pentagon, a fact that says more about what makes America great than any one of Trump’s endless soliloquies on the subject.

Founded as a lark by a group of Ulysses Grant’s soldiers, who had been pressmen before the Civil War and who stumbled across a printing press that had been abandoned by its pro-Confederate publisher in the bootheel of Missouri, Stripes has always expressed the sometimes angry, sometimes woebegone, always resilient voice of the troops.

During World War II, Bill Mauldin, a 25-year-old sergeant, refused to follow Gen. George Patton’s order to spit and polish his cartoon GIs. It took an intervention from Patton’s boss, Dwight Eisenhower, to save Mauldin’s job ‒ and Stripes’ editorial independence.

That loyalty to audience over authority is what makes Stripes so beloved by its readers and so important to their morale. Its cheekily independent voice is a constant reminder of what we are fighting for when we fight: freedom of thought and expression.

To let that voice be stifled is to turn our backs on our history, our values and our troops.

Kathy Kiely is the Lee Hills Chair in Free Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism and a former correspondent for USA TODAY.