The Secretary of Defense, through a March 9 memorandum and interim policy, “prohibited” Stars and Stripes from using “news stories, features, syndicated columns, comic strips and editorial cartoons from commercial news media.” (Stars and Stripes)
Contact Stars and Stripes ombudsman Jacqueline Smith at ombudsman@stripes.com.
Pete Hegseth doesn’t want you to see cartoons in this newspaper anymore. And loyal readers of Stars and Stripes are hopping mad. You don’t mess with Sunday color comics.
The secretary of defense/war, through a March 9 memorandum and interim policy by Deputy Stephen Feinberg, “prohibited” Stars and Stripes from using “news stories, features, syndicated columns, comic strips and editorial cartoons from commercial news media.” The word “prohibited” was put in boldface for emphasis by the Pentagon, not by me.
The memo ordered Stripes to “immediately” begin implementing the “guidance.”
While Stripes is partially funded by the Defense Department and its staff are DOD employees, Congress mandated decades ago that it must operate with editorial independence from the military for the sake of transparency and credibility.
Stripes leadership discussed how to comply with the unwanted order. Reluctantly, they concluded the comic strips and other purchased syndicated material had to go.
After years of receiving eight pages of Sunday color comics (in the weekend editions on Fridays), readers on March 27 instead found a bleak message: “Due to a recent directive from the Department of Defense, Stars and Stripes is no longer permitted to utilize certain syndicated and third-party content.” Why? “It is the department’s determination that readers can readily access this content through other outlets.”
Tell that to the troops stationed around Iran — go track down eight pages of your favorite comics elsewhere.
In the message, Stripes welcomed feedback from readers. The response was swift, voluminous, and beyond disappointed.
“Seriously?!? The comics were cut? Why? It was the balancing feature of the paper that I so enjoyed. Please bring back this moment of levity.”
“Very unhappy about the changes and your inability to link to syndicated content. In the U.S. it may be easy to find the information elsewhere, but for those deployed just another example of the Administration not caring about the military.”
“The guys/gals in isolated assignments get one paper if lucky. Stars n Stripes is like sunshine on a rainy day. ’74-76 ROK Missile Site. These changes to ‘our paper’ are an insult to the citizen soldier.”
“As a retired Navy veteran, [I] feel the DOD directive smells like censorship. Will keep my subscription for now but if it turns into propaganda/biased news outlet I may reconsider. We fought for the Constitution and freedom. That includes transparency of our government and freedom of the press. As an American, I have a right to decide what I read.”
“I want my Sunday Comics. Why is that an issue? It’s called downtime for a reason.”
Most of the 152 comments I read were anonymous. More come in every day. To be fair, I must note that a few readers welcomed the jettisoning of syndicated material.
“Maybe if you had sources from a variety of outlets rather than primarily AP, a demonstrably political left organization … the Pentagon would not have stepped in. I am not advocating to get rid of the AP but you should have tried a counterpoint. … Not an administration apologist, but your arrogance is typical of what’s led to the current climate in political power. … Even less likely to buy or read a single issue ever again.”
While most of the comments were related to the absence of comics, other readers objected overall to the prohibition against using syndicated material, such as news coverage from The Associated Press and Reuters. From my viewpoint as ombudsman, they rightly see it as censorship, an infringement on Stripes’ editorial independence.
I should note that this column is my opinion; no one at Stripes asked or encouraged me to write it. All of my ombudsman columns are copy edited for grammar and style with no changes to content before publishing.
What is happening with Stripes is within the broader context of the Pentagon attempting to restrict the mainstream media. At first it was by closing off areas of the complex where journalists previously had been able to go unescorted, then it followed last fall with the demand for the press to sign an agreement essentially saying it would not use any information not authorized by the department. That’s when more than two dozen journalists from mainstream media turned in their press badges and walked out. They still cover the news.
The wished-for changes to Stripes were signaled in a Jan. 15 post on X by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman with the title of Assistant to the Secretary of War (Public Affairs) in which he said Stripes would be “custom tailored to our warfighters. It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY.”
Actually, Stripes has not wavered from that longtime mission. But the troops are more than instruments of “lethality” — they are thinking people who need unfiltered, unbiased news; many have families who need to know what’s going on with education, health care and, yes, even recreation in their overseas communities.
A reader put it this way: “Perhaps the best part about reading the news is that there is a comic section to lighten the heart. If you want the paper to be read beyond this generation, add the comics back. My kids read the entertainment articles and comics. You’ll lose the next generation if there are no comics.”
And another: “I had four kids (8-14 yrs old) (and two adults) that were SUPER upset today when there were no weekend comics to read in the paper.”
The March 9 memorandum and interim policy I mentioned at the beginning of this column put Parnell’s post into an instruction. My concern is that it erodes Stripes’ editorial independence in many unacceptable ways, the loss of comics one of them. And it charges Parnell with turning the “interim” policy into a permanent one.
One of the readers objecting to the loss of “Beetle Bailey” and “Garfield” and all the other comic strips in Stripes wondered if anyone was reading their comments. Yes, I have read them and so has Stripes leadership as well as the Publisher’s Advisory Board comprised of journalism executives from around the country.
Pentagon leadership, which can do something about it, ought to read them, too.
