Rufus Friday: Don' turn Stars and Stripes into mere message platform

About the writer: Rufus Friday chairs the Stars and Stripes newspaper publisher’s national advisory board. Former publisher of the Tri-City Herald and Lexington Herald-Leader, he is currently serving as executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting. This essay was first published by the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.

Some news organizations have developed a set of values to guide their reporting journalistic values.

Most are just written down somewhere. Very few inscribe them on their walls.

The five values of Stars and Stripes, the independent newspaper and news source serving our military communities, can be found on a large mural, proudly displayed at Camp Humphreys in South Korea.

The words aren’t subtle: Credibility. Impartiality. Truth-telling. Balanced. Accountable.

They are not marketing slogans. They are a compact between Stars and Stripes and its readers, many of whom are far from home and often in harm’s way.

But a recent edict, disclosed by a spokesman for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, may steer Stars and Stripes away from those core values. In a social media post, the spokesman said the Pentagon intends to “refocus” its reporting toward content “custom tailored to our warfighters,” such as weapon systems and lethality.

The same statement said Pentagon-produced content would soon fill 50 percent of its pages, replacing content now produced by civilian journalists and edited and directed by civilian editors independent of the military chain-of-command.

Such a change would upend the proud mission and legacy of Stars and Stripes, which is now, and should remain, distinctly different from public relations content produced by uniformed public affairs teams.

As a First Amendment enterprise, Stars and Stripes sometimes is the only way those deployed in remote areas can stay connected with news from home — a vital, physical connection for those in harm’s way. Its independence allows it to pursue issues of concern to the health, safety and well-being of service members and their families.

Such reporting, to be effective, requires trust. In that vein, in August 2025, Stars and Stripes, working with the Center for Integrity in News Reporting, took a step that should be a role model for every news organization: It published a statement of its core values, declaring its devotion to credibility and impartiality.

Last fall, when I was in Tokyo for a ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the launch of the Pacific edition of Stars and Stripes, one of the speakers recalled the words of one of our nation’s greatest warfighters about this venerable news organization.

“The Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ paper. It must be kept free of censorship or propaganda. Its purpose is to tell the truth — good or bad — to the men and women who serve.”

That warfighter was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe and later 34th president of the United States.

Eisenhower’s words explain why generations of commanders tolerated often uncomfortable stories in Stars and Stripes: A paper that service members trust does more for cohesion and legitimacy than one that reads like a propaganda platform for approved narratives.

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 chairs the Stars and Stripes newspaper publisher’s national advisory board. Former publisher of the Tri-City Herald and Lexington Herald-Leader, he is currently serving as executive director of the Center for Integrity in News Reporting. This essay was first published by the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University.