The Defense Department has begun to exert greater control over Stars and Stripes, weeks after a top spokesman accused the independent military newspaper of focusing on "woke distractions."
The Pentagon announced what it calls "modernization" changes this week, in a memo dated March 9 and effective immediately, according to a copy seen by NPR and first reported by Stars and Stripes on Friday. It's the latest effort by the Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to apply extraordinary limits on journalists covering the agency.
The memo says that Stars and Stripes will continue to "operate with editorial independence." However, it also says that the newspaper must immediately begin implementing the Defense Department's new interim policies and stop publishing several types of content.
It also declares that the publication's content "must be consistent with good order and discipline," which is a phrase used in military justice.
Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin told NPR on Saturday that this phrase makes him particularly concerned for his staff reporters who are members of the U.S. military, and who thus can be court-martialed for violations of its uniform code of military justice.
"If they were to complete a story that the Defense Department did not like, and did not find 'consistent with good order and discipline,' would they be in legal jeopardy?" Slavin said. "We don't know the answer to that."
Pentagon says newspaper will be 'by the warfighter and for the warfighter'
This new memo comes weeks after the Pentagon publicly criticized Stars and Stripes and promised an overhaul of the publication.
"We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members," chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote in a Jan. 15 post on X.
In an emailed statement on Saturday, Parnell told NPR that the Defense Department "is returning [Stars and Stripes] to its original mission: an independent news source for service members stationed overseas that is by the warfighter and for the warfighter." Parnell added that the changes mean the newspaper "will evolve" in order "to meet industry trends and changes in how new generations of service members consume media."
Slavin told NPR that the Defense Department had not responded to his efforts to communicate with them since that post, and the Pentagon did not send his newspaper the new memo directly — it only issued a statement for his newspaper's article about it.. (The memo said a copy would be sent to Stars and Stripes Publisher Max Lederer; Slavin told NPR Lederer did not receive a copy.)
Slavin said he only found out about the memo on Thursday, three days after it was issued, after one of his staffers found it on a Defense Department website.
Stars and Stripes has served the U.S. military independently for decades
The newspaper's staff will be meeting Monday morning to figure out how to comply with the memo. Slavin said that he felt "deep concern for our staff and our readership" about the memo, since it "restricts what news sources can be published and directs that Stars and Stripes should publish official public relations stories."
Stars and Stripes first covered the U.S. military during the Civil War, and has been published continuously since World War II. It is owned by the Defense Department but is largely staffed by civilian reporters and editors. By Congressional mandate, it has operated independently since the 1990s.
But under the Trump administration, the Pentagon has appeared to try to end that Congressional mandate. In January, the Defense Department withdrew a federal regulation that underpinned the mandate, according to Stars and Stripes. The new memo published this week says that the newspaper's ombudsman should now send information meant for Congress to the Department of Defense first, instead of directly to federal legislators.
Trump and Hegseth have sought to exert greater control over several media entities
Stars and Stripes has historically enjoyed bipartisan support — including from President Trump. In 2020, during his first administration, the Pentagon threatened to shut it down, before Trump intervened. In a social-media post at the time, he called the newspaper "a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!"
But these days, Trump and his allies have sought to exert far greater direct control over several media entities — and Hegseth's Defense Department has been particularly aggressive on this front.
In September, Hegseth unveiled a policy that required media outlets to pledge not to gather information unless defense officials had formally authorized its release. Most established news organizations, including NPR, chose to give up their press passes instead of agreeing to the policy.
Press freedom advocacy organizations decried this latest Pentagon memo after Stars and Stripes reported on it this week.
"Service members and military families rely on Stars and Stripes for independent reporting, not for material shaped or dictated by the very officials the paper is supposed to hold accountable," Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director at PEN America, said in a statement.
The Pentagon will curtail coverage of war zones — and March Madness
The Defense Department's new memo will likely also stifle much of Stars and Stripes' daily newsgathering operations — including its ability to cover the new war in Iran or other combat zones where its military readers may be deployed.
That's because the memo prohibits Stars and Stripes from publishing most stories from wire services, like the Associated Press or Reuters. Many news organizations publish stories from such wire services to inform readers about important news they do not have the resources to cover themselves. In the case of Stars and Stripes, that means its readers will not see stories or photos from Iran or other war zones where it does not currently have journalists working.
Stars and Stripes also will not be able to utilize wire services to cover lighter but popular news, like the upcoming March Madness college basketball tournament and other major sporting events. The memo even explicitly bans Stars and Stripes from publishing comic strips.
"We do use a lot of those other services to round out our coverage, and it appears that we will be unable to do that," Slavin says. "We will need to find other sources of information."
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