The Scoop
Earlier this year, the Department of Defense announced that it would be taking greater editorial control over the longrunning military news organization, which has previously operated with editorial latitude. In a memo in March, the Pentagon said the publication must publish content consistent with “good order and discipline,” a legalistic military phrase. The new rules limited syndication of external stories and content, and instructed the newspaper’s ombudsman to send information intended for Congress to the Department of Defense first.
A Pentagon spokesperson at the time said the paper would retain its editorial independence, but the changes would modernize its practices and “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale.”
In a letter to the Pentagon and the newspaper’s top editorial leadership on Wednesday, first shared with Semafor, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal criticized the new rules, arguing that they violated editorial rules intended to safeguard the paper’s independence and ability to publish, on occasion, unflattering information.
“DoD’s new policy threatens the credibility of Stars and Stripes, and the reliable flow of unbiased news to service members, and contradicts decades of Congressional reforms that guarded against censorship at the paper,” the senators said. “We urge you to immediately rescind DoD’s new policy and restore editorial independence guaranteed by the First Amendment to Stars and Stripes.”
The letter, signed by Democratic senators Tammy Duckworth, Ruben Gallego, Mazie Hirono, and Mark Kelly included a list of seven questions, including whether the Pentagon had restricted any articles from being published, and what Stars and Stripes articles were determined by the department to be not “consistent with good order and discipline.” The senators asked the department to respond to its questions by April 22.
While Stars and Stripes is largely intended as a news and media resource for soldiers and military families, it has broken numerous stories over several decades that have revealed Pentagon misconduct, mismanagement, and scandal.
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The Pentagon’s recent assertion of editorial control over Stars and Stripes is part of a broader and well-documented crackdown by the department over any media coverage that could be seen as critical of the department or even simply unsanctioned by its official communications operation. Since returning to office, Trump has empowered the DoD to institute new restrictions limiting media access within the Pentagon and suggesting credentials could be revoked if reporters sought information that the department did not want revealed.
During press appearances, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has criticized the media’s coverage, and even individual reporters. During a press conference on Wednesday, he opted largely to call on conservative outlets; when he did speak to legacy media reporters, he complained that an ABC News reporter’s question was an “indictment framed as a question,” and said an NBC News journalist was “nasty” for attempting to speak over another journalist.
Max’s view
As members of the congressional minority, Democratic congresspeople are limited in their ability to exact concessions from the federal government. Since the latest congress was sworn in, strongly-worded letters from Democratic congressmembers to the Trump administration have yielded some headlines, but little new revelatory information or action.
Warren and Blumenthal have been among the more notable lawmakers demanding information from Paramount over the company’s attempts to get federal regulators to approve its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. As we’ve written previously, if Democrats return to the majority in 2027, these letters have laid out the blueprint for what Democratic oversight could look like.
But perhaps most importantly, Wednesday’s note on Stars and Stripes is part of the growing interest among Democratic lawmakers and on the political left in boosting independent and noncorporate news organizations with original reporting. While in past years many national Democratic politicians have been disinterested in congressional action around anything related to the news media, interest in the Paramount/WBD merger, Stars and Stripes, funding for public media, and FCC regulations have shown that Democrats are increasingly concerned about issues impacting news media in the US.