Nieman Foundation at Harvard
The Pentagon has ordered the 159-year-old independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to come up with a shutdown plan by September 15 and stop publishing by September 30. The news — and a bipartisan group of senators’ plea to save the paper — was reported on Wednesday. This morning, USA Today reported on the memo in which Colonel Paul R. Haverstick, Jr., director of the Defense Media Activity, issued the shutdown order.
The plan for dissolution, due by September 15, should include a “specific timeline for vacating government-owned/leased space worldwide,” he wrote, and “the last newspaper publication (in all forms) will be September 30, 2020.”
At Military.com, Oriana Pawlyk reported:
The Pentagon in February proposed cutting all of the newspaper’s funding — roughly $15.5 million annually — to reallocate those dollars toward other high-profile programs, such as space, nuclear and hypersonic systems, [Defense Secretary Mark Esper] said at the time. The Senate version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act does not contain funding for the paper; lawmakers will convene this fall to develop a joint version of the bill.
“We trimmed the support for Stars and Stripes because we need to invest that money, as we did with many, many other programs, into higher-priority issues,” he said during a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, following DoD’s $740 billion budget submission to Congress. Stars and Stripes is published in print and online.
While the paper, which is distributed to U.S. troops stationed at bases worldwide, maintains editorial independence, it receives federal funding as part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Agency. About $8.7 million of the subsidy comes through operations and maintenance (O&M) funding, and about $6.9 million from contingency operations funds, Stripes said. The remainder of the Stripes annual budget comes from advertising, subscriptions and sales.
That $15.5 million annual subsidy is 0.002% of the Pentagon’s proposed $740 billion budget for 2021.
News about the impending shutdown of Stars and Stripes came in the same week that The Atlantic reported that Trump called American soldiers who died in the war “losers” and “suckers” and asked to keep veterans who had had limbs amputated out of a 2018 military parade because “nobody wants to see that.”
Stars and Stripes is an essential part of our nation’s free press that serves the very population charged with defending our freedoms. The Defense Department should reinstate funding so @StarsandStripes can continue to operate. Read our bipartisan letter: pic.twitter.com/k3KzAZ4hun
— Senator Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) September 2, 2020
"The Pentagon delivered an order to shutter Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that has been a lifeline and a voice for American troops since the Civil War."
When you don't like what they say about you, make them shut down.
Utterly reprehensible.https://t.co/2GvuGJ3YSF
— Yascha Mounk (@Yascha_Mounk) September 4, 2020
the claim that zeroing out @starsandstripes
funds is necessary for savings given the Pentagon's money track record is absurd enough.But shutting it down as bipartisan lawmakers say don't and a CR is assured in the weeks ahead is really something else. https://t.co/K8qQf7JV3b
— Phil Mattingly (@Phil_Mattingly) September 4, 2020
I've done partnerships with Stars and Stripes and it always struck me as a community, where military families saw their unique experiences reflected. I hope we can continue to hear their voices in wider media.
— Annemarie Dooling (@TravelingAnna) September 4, 2020
every headline needs to explain that he's doing this to eliminate dissenting voices from the military https://t.co/M2Y0iUp4KA
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) September 4, 2020
I'm not yet fully convinced the administration's decision to dissolve Stars & Stripes and the general officers leaking Trump's distaste for military personnel are completely separate stories
— Adam Weinstein (@AdamWeinstein) September 4, 2020
Trump has taken over VOA, Radio Free Europe, etc… planting loyalists, firing critical journalists. He can't do that with Stripes so he's just… zeroing out the budget. Congress didn't act, didn't take Trump/Esper's attacks on Stripes seriously, just shook their fists.
— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) September 4, 2020
"Why cant we just send them USA Today?" some former admin officials in Obama's Pentagon would bark at me. The answer is the reporting. Unflinching, unyeilding, purposeful to a unique audience, all for American security. pic.twitter.com/WtQKUruCUx
— Kevin Baron (@DefenseBaron) September 4, 2020
Hey @starsandstripes — set up a fundraising site now. Take it independent. There are a lot of people who will help.
— Molly McKew (@MollyMcKew) September 4, 2020
A century ago in media history:
Harold Ross, a miner's son & Army engineer in France during WWI, walks 150 miles to Paris to work for the @starsandstripes.
While in Paris, Ross meets bon vivants like Alexander Woollcott. He gets an idea. Goes back to NYC. Starts @NewYorker. https://t.co/bDID27SnzO
— Virginia Heffernan (@page88) September 4, 2020
Andy Rooney remembers covering the liberation of Buchenwald for "Stars and Stripes" in 1945. He felt tremendous responsibility for accuracy, because, even then, he suspected in the future there'd be denial & disbelief. The story was just too incredible.https://t.co/8E2ZKZ7jp6
— Michael Socolow (@MichaelSocolow) September 4, 2020
And for some background on what Stars and Stripes meant to the military under previous management, here’s a documentary about the newspaper produced by the Department of Defense in 1960.
