UPDATE:
On July 21, the House passed a version of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that included the roughly $15.5 million annual subsidy for the Stars and Stripes.
Subsequently, on July 23, the Senate passed its version of the 2021 NDAA which did not include the desperately needed funds.
Now, a conference of the House and Senate Armed Service committees will meet to agree to a final version of the NDAA to be approved by both chambers of Congress by September 30.
Fortunately, “bipartisan pushback is growing against [the] Trump administration proposal to cut all funding for the independent voice of American troops,” writes Claire Barrett at HistoryNet.com.
Original Post:
As a young service member stationed overseas, the venerable Stars and Stripes, a “military newspaper” that traces its roots back to the Civil War, was my connection – my lifeline – to home and country.
Hardly a day would go by that I did not splurge 25 cents, I believe, on “the hometown newspaper of the U.S. military,” as referred to by Gen. David Petraeus.
Reviewing the documentary film “The World’s Most Dangerous Paper Route“*, Blake Stilwell describes “physical newspapers” such as the Stars and Stripes as media that provide unquestioned reporting that American military have to read to “understand the world around them and the world which continues to go on without them back home.”
But loyalty to and respect for this newspaper go back even farther and even higher.
When, during World War II, one of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s generals complained about a Stars and Stripes cartoonist lampooning a decree that all soldiers – including those in combat – be clean-shaven at all times, Gen. Eisenhower said, “Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ paper, and we won’t interfere.”
More recently, in February, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Logan said about the Stars and Stripes: “[It] has provided a valuable service to millions of military members and the Department of Defense (DoD) for more than 70 years…Their hard work and dedication in reporting on issues that matter the most to the military community continues to be of value.”
Yet, the same spokesman attempted to justify the “difficult decision” that “beginning in fiscal year 2021, [DoD] will no longer provide appropriated funds to Stars and Stripes,” perhaps forcing it to cease operation.
Although an independent military newspaper, the Stars and Stripes is subsidized by DoD to the tune of approximately $15 million a year. It is also mandated by Congress to be governed and protected by First Amendment principles.
The proposed effective shutdown of another news medium “dovetails with [Trump’s] broader attempt to control or curtail the media,” says the Washington Post, and adds:
As the administration seeks to shutter a publication that holds the Defense Department to account, it also is undermining the independence of long-respected U.S. government-funded foreign broadcasting operations, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Representative Seth Moulton, a Marine veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, calls it “Another obnoxious assault by the Trump administration on freedom of the press.”**
During the Iraq War, the Stars and Stripes was generous enough to publish several opinion pieces and Letters to the Editor by this author critical of that war. It did so for many other much more influential authors.
I do not remember then-President Bush constantly calling the news media “fake news,” or, worse, calling reporters “scumbags” who should be “executed.”
A few days ago, The Stars and Stripes published a Tribune News Service opinion piece by Ann McFeatters, “The 15 signs of authoritarianism? We’ve seen them.”
Although, McFeatters does not include Trump’s attacks on freedom of the press when she asks and then lists “What are 15 signs my country is sliding into authoritarianism?”, the 15 she does list are enough for us to “be the judges in November,” as she concludes.
Please read all 15 indictments on a corrupt president HERE, before the same president shuts down another First Amendment publication that serves “The men and women who sacrifice every day for the safety of our nation [and who] deserve the objective and balanced unique content produced by Stars and Stripes.”
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* “The World’s Most Dangerous Paper Route” is “the story of the unsung heroes who deliver the ‘Stars And Stripes’ military newspaper to soldiers in Afghanistan…”
Please watch the trailer below
** One finding of a just-released Gallup and Knight “2020 American Views survey” is:
While a majority of Americans across the political spectrum (80%) say the media is under attack politically, they are divided as to whether those attacks are merited. Whereas 70% of Democrats say the media is under attack and those attacks are not justified, 61% of Republicans say such attacks are justified.
