In a blow to independent coverage of the military, the Pentagon has fired the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes, a newspaper that covers the U.S. armed forces and is partly funded by the Defense Department.
“Apparently the Pentagon also doesn’t want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes,” the ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, wrote in a Stars and Stripes column published on Thursday. She said that the Defense Department had given no reason for her dismissal and that she had been told it was “not grievable.”
Her role as ombudsman, which she began in December 2023, was to serve as a watchdog monitoring the paper’s independence and to report concerns to Congress.
“Jacqueline Smith has been relieved of her duties as Stars and Stripes ombudsman effective immediately,” the Defense Department said in a statement.
Ms. Smith’s departure followed months of actions by the Pentagon, under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, to exert editorial control of the newspaper, which has been published continuously since World War II. On Jan. 15, Sean Parnell, the department’s chief spokesman, kicked off the intervention with a social media post: “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”
That directive blindsided the editorial leadership at Stars and Stripes — just as Ms. Smith was unprepared for the notice that she was being removed from the payroll.
“There was no communication at all,” Ms. Smith said in an interview. She said she had been raising concerns — in her column, on podcasts and to congressional committees — about the threat to the independence of Stars and Stripes posed by the Pentagon.
“I knew it was risky to speak out, but my responsibility to Stripes and the First Amendment was paramount,” Ms. Smith wrote in an email to the publication’s staff.
In a recent column, she blasted a March 9 Pentagon directive banning the use of “news stories, features, syndicated columns, comic strips and editorial cartoons from commercial news media” in Stars and Stripes.
“Pete Hegseth doesn’t want you to see cartoons in this newspaper anymore,” wrote Ms. Smith, who has more than 40 years of experience in journalism.
Stars and Stripes receives about half of its budget through the Defense Department, though staff members for decades have prided themselves on running a newspaper with editorial latitude unfettered by Pentagon leaders. “Stars and Stripes is editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command,” its website says.
Ms. Smith was the 13th ombudsman for Stars and Stripes and wrote in her column that the position had stemmed from congressional concerns that military leaders tried to stifle unfavorable news about the 1980s Iran-contra affair and other controversies.
The department’s actions against Stars and Stripes are just one component of a more restrictive media policy under the direction of Mr. Hegseth. He has imposed tighter curbs on journalists’ access to the Pentagon itself, as well as restrictions on how journalists can request information from sources in the military. The New York Times filed suit in December against the restrictions, and a judge ruled twice against the department’s curbs. The Pentagon has appealed those rulings.
The troops, Ms. Smith said in the interview, “deserve to have the unfiltered news, not what the Defense Department wants them to hear.”
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