Pentagon Fires Stars and Stripes Ombudsman

Stars and Stripes columnist Jacqueline Smith says the Pentagon fired her and gave her no reason for her dismissal.

"Apparently the Pentagon also doesn't want you to hear from me anymore about threats to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. They fired me," Smith, the military newspapers ombudsman whose job is to monitor the outlet's editorial independence and report concerns to Congress, wrote Thursday in an op-ed published in the newspaper.

Smith, who took on the job in December 2023, said she was told the action "is not grievable."

Her last day is April 28.

"As required, I have told the House and Senate Armed Services committees in recent months of my great and growing concern about attempted control of the newspaper by the Pentagon," Smith wrote.

"No one should be surprised that they're kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes' editorial independence," she added.

The newspaper receives half its funding from the Pentagon but maintains editorial independence from the Department of War.

The move follows Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell's announcement on Jan. 15 that the department would modernize the paper's operations, "refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members."

Since then, Smith said she has been "outspoken in my columns, media interviews, talks with national free press groups and communications with Congress about the Pentagon's moves to take control of Stripes' content."

On the same day as Parnell's X post, she said the Pentagon "rescinded the process in the Code of Federal Regulations that would have given Stripes legal protection from interference. Their move is illegal because there was no opportunity for public comment as required through the Administrative Procedures Act, among other violations. This sounds dry, but it's important."

"Without codifying Stripes' operation in the Federal Register, the operating policy reverted to an outdated, decades-old directive that could be changed on a whim by the DOD. And that's exactly what they did in an interim policy issued March 9 by Deputy Secretary of Defense/War Steve Feinberg."

Press freedom advocacy group PEN America has called on Congress to "step in now" that Smith had been fired.

Smith "has been fired for doing exactly what Congress intended Stars and Stripes' ombudsman to do — protecting the independence the publication has held for decades," Tim Richardson, journalism and disinformation program director with the group, said in a statement Friday.

"Even as the nation is at war, Pentagon leadership is silencing independent voices that uphold credible reporting, part of a broader pattern of restricting press access to evade scrutiny."

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