Pentagon attack on Stars and Stripes is part of Trump’s war on media

The Aug. 21 firing of the publisher, editor and a reporter at the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, along with recent restrictions on what the paper can publish, are examples of the Trump administration’s efforts to limit what Americans can learn about government actions.

The firings came soon after Stars and Stripes reported on harsh conditions — including food and water shortages, and malfunctioning plumbing — experienced by sailors deployed since November on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which was participating in President Trump’s war of choice against Iran. The newspaper reported that some sailors were “struggling with exhaustion and declining morale, including reports of suicidal thoughts.”

Trump denied the reports and falsely claimed the carrier was “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.” He accurately said it was soon heading back to the U.S.

Following the playbook of foreign dictatorships where freedom of the press doesn’t exist, Trump and his appointees are doing all they can to cover up their many failures and spread propaganda touting their false claims of success.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation has documented a long list of actions Trump and his administration have taken to “defund, defang and silence independent reporting.”

These actions include multibillion-dollar lawsuits Trump has filed against news organizations that reported unflattering stories about him. Other actions include the ending of federal funding of NPR and PBS, the near-dissolution of government broadcaster Voice of America, the ban on journalists Trump dislikes from the White House press pool and threats by the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission to revoke broadcast licenses of television stations owned by networks that air criticism of Trump.

Trump wants us to believe that whatever preposterous lies he tells — such as his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election — are true, while whatever truthful reporting he denounces is false. His low approval ratings in polls show many Americans have stopped believing him.

The firings at Stars and Stripes and restrictions the Defense Department has imposed on the newspaper deprive American service members who have volunteered to risk their lives defending our nation of their right to get accurate and independent news about the military, our government, the nation and the world.

Stars and Stripes staffers are civilian employees of the Defense Department, which partially funds the publication. A 1993 department directive says the paper shall provide “a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship. The calculated withholding of unfavorable news is prohibited.”

The Pentagon ended that policy in January. Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on social media that the department “will modernize” Stars and Stripes to “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

In addition, Parnell wrote that Stars and Stripes must no longer publish stories produced by The Associated Press , a nonpartisan news service with reporters around the world that provides news to thousands of newspapers, broadcasters and websites. This severely limits the news Stars and Stripes can publish.

These changes aren’t about modernization. They are about censorship, giving the Defense Department the power to run Stars and Stripes as a propaganda organ that reports only news favorable to the Trump administration.

When the newspaper’s ombudsman warned that the new policy endangered its editorial independence, she was fired , prompting her to file a lawsuit against the Defense Department in June.

The editorial independence of Stars and Stripes dates back to World War I. Gen. John Pershing said the paper helped “sustain the morale” of troops because it was uncensored and truthful. During World War II, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower said that “Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ newspaper. We will not interfere.”

Stars and Stripes has been continuously published since World War II as a daily tabloid and has appeared online since 2004. Before the internet and smartphones, it was often the only source of news for many members of the military stationed abroad.

Trump seeks to portray most of the news media as dishonest, far-left and anti-American. He has called the news media “an enemy of the American people,” echoing the charge dictators Adolf Hitler of Germany, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union, and Mao Zedong of China made against independent news organizations in their countries.

In fact, the media function as the eyes and ears of the American people, shedding light on government actions to hold officials accountable, regardless of political party.

Every president has clashed with the media. The relationship between the two is inherently adversarial. But Trump has done more than any modern president — even Richard Nixon — to seek to muzzle journalists and news organizations in order to limit unfavorable news coverage.

Our 80-year-old president won’t change his hostility to independent media. We should all hope that whoever becomes president in 2029 embraces the dramatically different view expressed in 1786 by future president Thomas Jefferson, who wrote : “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

A. Scott Bolden is an attorney, NewsNation contributor, former chair of the Washington, D.C. Democratic Party and a former New York state prosecutor.