RUFUS FRIDAY | CENTER FOR INTEGRITY IN NEWS REPORTING, Stars and Stripes; Don’t turn the military’s newspaper into a message platform
"There are places where a news organization’s values aren’t just written down, they’re literally inscribed on the walls.
Recently, staff at the Stars and Stripes press facility at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, the largest United States overseas military facility, unveiled a large mural titled “Stars and Stripes’ Core Values.” The words aren’t subtle: Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.
Those aren’t marketing slogans. They are the compact between a newsroom and its readers, and especially important when the readership is the U.S. military community, often far from home, often in harm’s way.
That is why the Department of Defense’s recent posture toward Stars and Stripes is so alarming.
According to reporting by The Associated Press and other news organizations, the Pentagon said in a public statement by a spokesperson for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that it would “refocus” Stars and Stripes away from certain subject areas and toward content “custom tailored to our warfighters,” including weapons systems, fitness, lethality and related themes. The same reporting describes proposed steps such as removing content from wire services like the AP and Reuters and having a significant portion of content produced by the Pentagon itself.
Stars and Stripes is unusual and intentionally structured as-so on purpose. The paper’s own “About” page states plainly that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command,” and “unique among Department of Defense authorized news outlets” in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”
In August 2025, Stars and Stripes took a step that I believe should be studied by every news organization trying to rebuild trust: it adopted and published a statement of core values emphasizing credibility and impartiality, and drawing a bright line between news and opinion.
When a government authority suddenly declares that a news outlet must abandon certain viewpoints and then signals it will take a more hands-on role in shaping editorial operations, it sends a clear message to readers: the outlet is being pressured to produce coverage that satisfies those in power, rather than reporting grounded in facts.
No serious newsroom can sustain trust under that condition, which is already in dangerously short supply. Gallup reports that Americans’ confidence in mass media has fallen to historic lows, with just 28% expressing a great deal or fair amount of trust. When Gallup began measuring media trust in the 1970s, that figure routinely exceeded two-thirds of the public.
If our nation is struggling to persuade people that journalism is independent, accurate, objective, impartial and not an instrument of power, why would we take one of the country’s most symbolically important newsrooms, an outlet serving people in uniform, and wrap it more tightly inside the very institution it is entrusted to cover?
Last fall, I was in Japan for the 80th anniversary celebration of the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes. In a detailed first-person account, the gala’s keynote speaker, journalist Steve Herman, described the paper’s long history of resisting becoming a “propaganda rag,” including General Eisenhower’s defense of the paper’s independence.
That history matters because it explains why generations of commanders tolerated uncomfortable stories: a paper that service members trust does more for cohesion and legitimacy than one that reads like a propaganda platform for approved narratives.
The Stars and Stripes values statement puts it plainly: “Credibility is the greatest asset of any news medium,” and impartiality is its “greatest source of credibility.” It describes truth-telling as the core mission, accountability as a discipline, and it emphasizes the strict separation between news and opinion.
Those principles are neither ideological nor hostile to the military. They are the foundational principles of a free press, and they are especially important when the audience is made up of people who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
The Americans who serve in our Armed Forces deserve more than information that flatters authority.
They deserve journalism that respects them enough to tell the truth.
That mural in South Korea has it right. Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.
We should treat those words as a promise kept and a commitment upheld.
Rufus Friday serves as chairman of the Stars and Stripes publisher advisory board of directors and is the former publisher of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky. Currently he is the executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting."
