STATEMENT ON STARS AND STRIPES

The newspaper's congressionally mandated editorial independence must be protected

Stars and Stripes is an editorially independent newspaper that serves the troops and their families overseas.

News this past week that President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are considering interfering with this newspaper’s congressionally mandated mission to provide a paper to the troops free of any interference from outside the newspaper’s editorial chain of command should concern all Americans.

Any unlawful intrusion of this newspaper’s crucial mission would be a detriment to the military readers it serves, and anti-American in nature. Stripes has never been the military’s newspaper. It is the military’s hometown newspaper that reports on the military for the military, and is supplemented with the same stateside news they would expect from any other editorially independent newspaper.

The paper is a non-appropriated fund entity and receives approximately a third of its operating budget from the Pentagon with the rest coming from other sources such as advertising, single-copy sales, and online subscriptions.

Stripes reporters are with the troops during war and peace, and experts on their subject matter. There are countless examples over the years of the paper reporting on important issues that have resulted in positive change for its readers.

Its award-winning 2003 Ground Truth series reporting on conditions on the ground in Iraq alerted military leadership of troops’ concerns in that theater of war.

From that reporting:

“With so many voices clamoring for attention, Stripes decided to try to find out what the ground truth was in Iraq. What were the concerns troops had as they watched their mission change from storming Baghdad to patrolling it? Were things as bad as some servicemembers said? Were conditions as good as others said?”

What Stripes discovered in their reporting led to bipartisan action in Congress to address our troops’ concerns.

I am calling on Congress to once again reassert the importance of Stars and Stripes as it did when Trump went down this perilous road in his first term. Trump correctly reversed course, and posted this on social media channels at the time:

“(Stripes) will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!”

He was as right then as he is wrong now.

While I haven’t set foot in the Stripes newsroom in 17 years, I still believe it to be the most important newspaper in America serving its most important readers. It is a lasting symbol of our country’s occasional capacity to flash greatness.

It is detestable that Trump and Hegseth do not believe our troops deserve a newspaper that advocates for them and their families. It is truly sad they don’t believe our brave troops deserve the same rights, information and freedoms as every other American.

Stripes has been a part of the fabric of this country since the Civil War. It is as American as apple pie. It has survived many decades before this administration came along, and it is crucial it is still around long after it is gone.

---

-D. Earl Stephens, United States Navy Veteran, and Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes, 1999-2009