Fearful and desperate, Trump is escalating his war on truth
For over a century the government-funded but independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, has been doing its job of covering the United States military. It’s a huge job, since the Defense Department now employs nearly 3 million people and has a budget of about $1 trillion with an even bigger one proposed for next year.
As with all news organizations, the paper needs to be free of politically motivated interference if it’s going to do its job properly. It has a reputation for straight shooting.
The paper in 2024 uncovered “a bureaucratic practice that plagues thousands of veterans, making it appear as if they have a pending criminal charge when, in fact, their cases were investigated and charges not filed,” Poynter recalled this week. A couple of years earlier, Stars and Stripes exposed military rules that kept military spouses from working while stationed in Italy. Decades ago, it regularly published Ernie Pyle’s famed World War II dispatches and the “Willie and Joe” infantry cartoons by Bill Mauldin; longtime 60 Minutes investigative reporter Steve Kroft cut his teeth there.
Of course, the paper made some powerful enemies along the way, but it has also had powerful defenders.
“During World War II, when General George Patton tried to dismiss a Stars and Stripes cartoonist for poking fun at the general’s orders that soldiers be shaved clear even during combat, General Dwight D. Eisenhower dissuaded him,” the New York Times reported.
Ike called Stars and Stripes “the soldiers’ paper” and vowed, “we won’t interfere.”
But that was then.
In June, the paper’s ombudswoman was fired after identifying editorial interference. Over the past few weeks, the paper’s top editor, along with a Middle East correspondent and the publisher were fired, too — for supposed insubordination among other things — and are now suing on First Amendment grounds. They seem to have a rock-solid case.
Meanwhile, as the Washington Post reported this week, Hegseth’s Pentagon has “secretly installed several conservative military veterans with large online followings” apparently in order to go after those who criticize the Trump administration and to pump up the boss’s viewpoints. They may have roles that affect policy as well.
In Hegseth World, pro-Trump “influencers” are welcome. Journalists who dare to challenge the prescribed message are not.
Friday is the deadline for finding out what the U.S. District Court in Washington has to say about the charge by the three Stars and Stripes journalists that they were fired as retaliation for their news coverage — specifically about the deteriorating conditions inside a Navy aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.
What’s happened here should be seen for what it is — straight-up government censorship, the very kind that’s forbidden by the First Amendment.
It should also be seen as part of Trump’s overarching and relentless effort to control the media, and in so doing to control what people know about his administration’s malfeasance.
As for the Pentagon influencers, this too is a variation on a theme — the White House briefing room and other such media spaces have been infiltrated by favored media people who are not journalists. Listen to Maggie Haberman explain to Christiane Amanpour why reporters don’t simply follow up on each other’s questions when they are ignored or dismissed. Whether or not you agree with her response, she paints an appalling picture from an insider’s perspective.
“Americans do not need a press corps chosen by the government,” wrote National Press Club president Mark Schoeff on Monday, as he responded to yet another development in the same larger story — that Trump’s Treasury Department has decided to bar journalists from the Times, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News from covering the G20 finance ministers meting in North Carolina. “They need a free and independent press capable of holding the government accountable.”
This loop of censorship and shilling is an all-out effort — including (also this week) Trump’s threat to sic the FCC on Kristen Welker of NBC’s “Meet the Press.” It also includes his ever-nastier attacks on Maggie Haberman and CNN’s Kristen Holmes.
It’s disgusting and utterly unacceptable.
The bigger picture is that Trump is freaking out, and trying desperately to weaken the messenger. As the midterm elections loom in just two months, he is saddled with a failed war, high gas prices, and a bottom-dwelling approval rating. All of his own making. Read this smart piece by Jonathan Alter about Republican incumbents’ vulnerabilities, due to their cowardly allegiance to Trump.
No wonder Trump doesn’t want Americans to vote freely and fairly. That must be a terrifying prospect.
It’s taken the American public a long time — far too long — but more of them, finally, are wise to this con man. We have good journalism, in part, to thank for that.
As readers of this newsletter know, I find plenty of fault with the mainstream press. To that point, here’s VoteBeat’s excellent Jessica Huseman on the many misleading and over-reacting headlines regarding the Supreme Court’s recent decision on Trump’s mail-voting scheme. (Tangentially, I proudly claim Huseman as a former star student of mine at Columbia J School.) Here’s VoteBeat’s own coverage, less sexy but more accurate.
But I also acknowledge how needed journalism is, and how crucial its role in our democracy.
Stay tuned for what happens this week with Stars and Stripes. I trust that the federal court sees the situation as the censorship that it so clearly is and reverses these firings.
Readers, as the midterms approach, please know that I’ll be doing my best here to hold the media to high standards. I know this matters deeply to you. Thanks for your support and your attention. It means a lot.
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My background: I am a Lackawanna, NY native who started my career as a summer intern at the Buffalo News, my hometown daily. After years as a reporter and editor, I was named the paper’s first woman editor in chief in 1999, and ran the 200-person newsroom for almost 13 years. Starting in 2012, I served as the first woman “public editor” of the New York Times — an internal media critic and reader representative — and later was the media columnist for the Washington Post. These days, I write here on Substack, as well as for the Guardian US. I’ve also written two books, taught journalism ethics, and won a few awards, including three for defending First Amendment principles.
The purpose of ‘American Crisis’: My aim is to use this newsletter (it started as a podcast in 2023) to push for the kind of journalism we need for our democracy to function — journalism that is accurate, fair, mission-driven and public-spirited. That means that I point out the media’s flaws and failures when necessary.
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