Well here’s an “only in Washington” conundrum.
The news emerges from the Pentagon with this sample headline from The Washington Post:
Stars and Stripes employees sue Pentagon over firings at military newspaper
The publication’s publisher, its editor in chief and a reporter allege that the government violated their First Amendment rights to free speech.
The Post story reports:
Three staffers at Stars and Stripes, including the military publication’s publisher and editor in chief, sued the Defense Department, saying their recent firings by the Pentagon were illegal and violated their free-speech protections under the First Amendment.
In the lawsuit, filed Thursday in federal district court in Washington, publisher Max Lederer, editor in chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte claimed that their firings last week for “insubordination” were retaliatory in nature and violated federal administrative law.
After a Pentagon official, Andrew Brey, emailed Lederer last week and asked him to fire Slavin and Korte for participating in a CBS News interview, he declined to do so and instead submitted plans to retire, The Washington Post previously reported.
Well now. The obvious question arises, even if it won’t be asked in Washington. The question: Were these three people independent journalists? Or were they federal government employees?
Interestingly, Wikipedia records this on the subject:
Stars and Stripes (stylized in all caps) is a daily American military newspaper reporting on matters concerning the members of the United States Armed Forces and their communities, with an emphasis on those serving outside the United States.[2] It operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it, and its First Amendment protection is safeguarded by the United States Congress, to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests, regularly reports.
Now. Note well this line:
It operates from inside the Department of Defense, but is editorially separate from it, and its First Amendment protection is safeguarded by the United States Congress, to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests, regularly reports.”
Hello? It shouldn’t be rocket science to see the problem here.
If some Congressman came up with the idea of the federal government purchasing The New York Times, turning Times reporters into both journalists and federal government employees, one can only imagine the resulting uproar.
But that, in reality, is what’s going on with Stars and Stripes. The line used that Stars and Stripes is “editorially separate from” the federal government -- the Department of Defense in this case -- but its First Amendment “protection is safeguarded by the United States Congress” and an “independent ombudsman who serves the readers’ interests” is, to say the least, amusing. Make that laughable.
What Americans are being asked to believe is that Stars and Stripes serves two masters: Independent journalism and the federal government.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but only the tooth fairy would believe that is possible. There is, in fact, a direct and vivid conflict between being a federal government employee and an independent journalist in the media. You can be one -- or you can be the other. But you most certainly cannot be both simultaneously. And to pretend otherwise denies reality.
One would suggest that this incident with Stars and Stripes should bring home the obvious question that Members of Congress must address.
Either Stars and Stripes reporters are independent journalists -- or they are federal government employees.
But they can’t be both.
