Under the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has tried more than once to impose restrictions on the free press. So far, those efforts have struggled in court, but there’s one news outlet where the Defense Department has had more success.

Over the summer, the Pentagon fired the publisher and the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, which followed the ouster of the longtime military newspaper’s ombudsman. Though the outlet has long operated with editorial independence, it’s partly funded by the Defense Department, which made the firings possible. (The ousted personnel are challenging their dismissals in court.)

Days later, retired Lt. Col. Rachel E. VanLandingham made the case in an MS NOW opinion piece that Hegseth “wants to turn Stars and Stripes into a Pentagon mouthpiece.” There’s fresh evidence to bolster the point. Military.com reported:

The Pentagon has named one of its own public affairs officials to run the publication Stars and Stripes, and he will keep his Pentagon job while doing it. This places a single official inside both the office that shapes the military’s message, and the newsroom charged with covering it independently.

Christian Devine, an executive director and principal adviser in the Pentagon’s public affairs office, was appointed acting publisher by chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell.

In other words, despite the legendary paper’s tradition of civilian leadership, the person responsible for the Pentagon’s public messaging is the same person running an ostensibly independent news outlet that covers the Pentagon.

It’s a bit like having one guy writing press releases and overseeing a media organization that publishes reports based on those press releases.

When Military.com asked the Defense Department about possible safeguards that would separate Devine’s Pentagon public affairs responsibilities from his role at the newspaper, a spokesperson said Devine will be “expected to act in the best interest of Stars and Stripes and the Department of War.”

But therein lies the point. As many service members and veterans likely know, Stars and Stripes is a military newspaper with a generations-old pedigree, which has long described itself as the “U.S. military’s independent news source.”

If its publisher is acting in the best interest of both the newspaper and the institution the newspaper covers, that’s the opposite of being an independent news source.

Stars and Stripes has long enjoyed the same kind of freedom as civilian newspapers, even if that meant publishing reports the Pentagon didn’t like. By design, it is not a propaganda outlet.

At least, that is, it wasn’t a propaganda outlet.

The Washington Post reported earlier this year that those seeking to fill vacancies at Stars and Stripes were asked how they would advance Donald Trump’s “policy priorities” in their respective roles. That problem now appears to be vastly worse.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Hegseth’s Pentagon names new publisher for Stars and Stripes, adding to newspaper’s troubles appeared first on MS NOW.

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