Brian S. Brooks is a former associate dean and longtime faculty member at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. He also served as the top European editor of Stars and Stripes from 1997 to 1999 and currently serves as president of the Stars and Stripes Museum and Library in Bloomfield, Missouri, where the newspaper was founded during the Civil War. Below is an article Brian recently wrote, and shared with us, regarding some recent changes at the Stars and Stripes Military Newspaper.
By: Brian S Brooks
My grandfather read Stars and Stripes while leading a platoon of engineers in World War I. He was wounded three times by German machinegun fire in the Battle of Meuse-Argonne, the last big battle of the war, and was lucky to make it home alive. My father read Stars and Stripes while serving as an A-36 dive-bomber pilot in Africa, Sicily and mainland Italy in World War II. He was in the first flight of planes to support the Salerno invasion, where he earned the first of four air medals. I read the European and Pacific editions of Stars and Stripes while serving as a young lieutenant in Germany and Vietnam, respectively.
The newspaper was important to all of us. It provided the only news we got about the progress (or lack thereof) in our wars. It also provided the only news from home. My father brought home a copy of European Stripes after flying 62 combat missions and later ferrying VIPs, including French General Charles de Gaulle, around Europe. I brought home copies of the Pacific edition outlining the virtual stalemate that existed in Vietnam while I was there in late 1971 and early 1972.
I later took a two-year sabbatical and leave of absence from Mizzou to become editor of the European edition. During that time, our troops were trying to keep peace in Bosnia while the United States was bombing recalcitrant Serbs in Kosovo and Belgrade, the Serbian capital.
A great Missourian, General John J. Pershing, set the tone for what Stripes was to become, the soldiers’ newspaper uncensored by Army officers. After World War I ended, he wrote, “I do not believe that any one factor could have done more to sustain the morale of the (American Expeditionary Force) than the Stars and Stripes.” The troops read it because it told the unvarnished truth. It was published from Paris during the full term of U.S. involvement in the war but closed when the last troops came home.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered that Stars and Stripes be restarted in the early days of U.S. participation in World War II. When General George S. Patton was infuriated by a Bill Mauldin cartoon lampooning his order that troops in the field be neatly dressed, Patton summoned Mauldin to appear before him and threatened to toss the cartoonist into jail. Eisenhower stopped Patton, saying “Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ newspaper. We will not interfere.” Mauldin later won the Pulitzer Prize for his wartime cartoons.
But by the early 1990s, several attempts by officers to interfere with Stripes’ content led to Congress getting involved. The result was a Department of Defense directive that ordered Stars and Stripes to serve as a First Amendment newspaper, telling the bad as well as the good. It also ordered employment of an ombudsman who would, among other duties, ensure that military officers did not interfere with Stripes’ content.
Congress’ mandate was in place by the time I became European editor in 1997, and the ombudsman was active, making regular visits to Europe to ensure that no officer or Department of Defense civilian interfered with Stripes’ editorial content. By the time I arrived most reporters were civilians, but a few were military men and women, a throwback to earlier days when the entire reporting staff was made up of enlisted men.
The congressional mandate of the early 1990s was so strong that military reporters were required to wear civilian clothing while on duty and were instructed not to salute officers to ensure their freedom to write the truth. One of my reporters was a Navy enlistee working in Sigonella, Sicily, who wrote a story that upset the Navy captain in charge there. The captain ordered the reporter to appear before him in uniform that afternoon with the intention of admonishing him.
The reporter called me and asked, “What do I do?” I told him I would call back soon. I called the captain in charge of all Navy public affairs in Europe, based in London, and explained the situation. “If your captain in Sigonella doesn’t back off, I’m calling Washington, and he’ll likely be relieved of his command for violating a DoD directive.”
“Let me take care of it,” the London captain replied. A half hour later, he called back and said it would not be necessary for the reporter to make an appearance before the SIgonella captain. It turned out that the captain there was not aware of the DoD directive and backed off when he learned of it. Problem solved.
So, Stars and Stripes’ legacy is that of an editorially independent news organization based on General Pershing’s idea that our troops need accurate information about world events and what’s going on at home. Just last month, however, the Pentagon announced a planned change of direction. Ernie Gates, a former Stripes’ ombudsman, wrote with outrage, “The top leadership of the world’s strongest military is so afraid of Stripes’ long record of truthful reporting to service members that they are blowing up its historic free press mission and dictating what it can and cannot publish.” Under the plan, 50 percent of content would be supplied by the Pentagon. All that was announced without consulting anyone in Stripes’ leadership, or, for that matter Congress, which the new Pentagon directive defies.
Every living former member of the Stripes team, and I’m sure 100% of the current staff, is infuriated with this development. Here are just a few reasons for that:
- Stripes is the only independent source of news for troops deployed outside the United States. Allowing the Pentagon to dictate half its content will likely destroy its credibility, developed over several decades.
- Stripes serves our troops even in wartime. In such areas, they are not allowed to have computers and mobile phones to prevent enemies from tracing their locations. That’s why it’s often their only source of news. And it’s why Stripes’ website is not a viable alternative.
- Stripes is valuable even in peaceful areas such as Japan and Germany. The Pentagon operates radio and television stations there, but the military controls their content. And other English-language publications are too expensive for troops to afford overseas and seldom if ever cover U.S. military news.
- Stripes serves as a shining example of American values. No other country’s military allows publication of a free and independent chronicler of military and other news. That shows other countries that Freedom of the Press is valued here, even as the government subsidizes Stripes’ publication. That subsidy is essential to distributing papers at great cost anywhere we have troops. The subsidy is a tiny speck in the DoD budget.
For those reasons and more, I’m contacting those in my congressional delegation to protest what the Pentagon is trying to do. I encourage you to do the same.