The battle over Stars and Stripes

Sunday, July 05, 2026

Stars and Stripes has a front page like no other. On a day when the headlines on other newspapers were dominated by earthquakes in Venezuela and Supreme Court decisions on immigration, Erik Slavin, the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, put out a newspaper for the American military, with stories about new tactics involving drones, and service members and families facing food insecurity. "We want to go with something that we know will directly interest our readers right away," Slavin said.

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More from the article ...

... The newspaper is part of the Department of Defense, and its reporters are Pentagon employees. But it has long maintained editorial independence from the top brass. "We're trying to provide independent news for the military community," Slavin said. ...

The paper has been published continuously since World War II, heralded as representing "the free thought and free expression of a free people."

But this past January, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell posted this on X: "We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century. We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale ... "

Asked what he understood "woke distractions" to mean, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin replied, "I really don't know what they were referring to, because they didn't explain it." ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-07-05 04:06 PM | Reply