02/20/2026
Connecticut Law Tribune Editorial
“Our Republic, and its press, will rise or fall together,” predicted Joseph Pulitzer in 1904.
Today, fresh setbacks, large and small, are undermining the Fourth Estate. In an unprecedented cut, corporate decision-makers are firing a third of the reporters at the Washington Post. Economic cuts at Thompson-Reuters and Pro-Publica are pressing the few remaining newspaper unions towards striking.
And, on re-organizational grounds, this all-volunteer Connecticut Law Tribune editorial board is winding down its affiliation with this publisher in a matter of weeks.
But no assault on journalism is more symbolic—and lawless—than the White House’s war on “woke,” targeting the military’s historic daily newspaper, Stars and Stripes. The paper has been a proudly non-partisan publication since 1861, and continuously published since World War II. It has a daily international readership of 1.4 million, and it has long been a respected source of professional reporting.
But will the Stars and Stripes continue to proudly wave?
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon has proclaimed an end to its Congressionally stipulated editorial independence. Content is to be supplied and controlled by the Pentagon. New hires, like reporters covering the Pentagon, are facing Trump administration loyalty oath credentialing.
Echoing themes Hegseth advocated as a weekend host for Fox News, there is to be a shift to focus on manly “warfighting,” weapons systems, lethality and physical fitness. Associated Press stories and “woke distractions” will go. The Pentagon doesn’t elaborate on what warrior-in-chief Hegseth means. But it can’t be good.
Standing up for First Amendment protections is Connecticut journalist Jacqueline Smith, a former managing editor of the Danbury News-Times. She is the official ombudsman for Stars and Stripes. Smith reports to the Congressional Armed Services Committee, not Hegseth. In her Jan. 20 column in Stars and Stripes, Smith reasoned, “If half the content is composed by the Pentagon, how could anyone trust the other half to be impartial? Credibility will turn to dust.” Smith invited readers to contact Congress, and in response, thousands have protested the shift toward the paper becoming a mere Pentagon house organ.
Ten U.S. Senators, led by Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, urged Hegseth to “immediately clarify that neither hiring practices nor editorial decisions at Stars and Stripes will be conditioned on ideological alignment or policy advocacy, and to reaffirm, publicly and unequivocally, the newspaper’s statutory independence.”
Title 10 of the U.S. Code Sec. 2494 requires Stars and Stripes to operate independently, free from censorship or control by the Department of Defense. It states that military leaders cannot influence content because it is critical, embarrassing or inconvenient. Even though funded by the government, its role is to inform the public and service members of the news necessary to perform their duties as citizens in a democracy.
Americans are rightfully thankful that its press is not just an arm of partisan government, pumping out propaganda. The Stars and Stripes controversy is as fundamental as the First Amendment, civilian oversight of our military, and the rule of law. However, a deeply unhealthy pathology of power and money is revealing itself. Huge media corporations pay tribute to White House authoritarianism. They do it with lawsuit settlements or vanity projects in architecture or film aimed at to mollifying an unquenchable executive ego to assure their government licenses. By these actions, multi-billion dollar corporations implicitly contend that standing up to governmental overreach would not be in their shareholders’ best interest.
Joseph Pulitzer was worried about this. He knew, as a businessman, publisher and philanthropist that deeply researched, rigorously vetted investigative reporting was a precious commodity. The prizes given in his name often favor news organizations that literally put their money where their mouth is. The Pulitzer judges have traditionally realized that great investigative reporters and editors don’t grow on trees. How can the Washington D.C. paper that brought Watergate to light, winner of 65 Pulitzers, be cut off at the knees?
To Sen. Bernie Sanders, who signed Blumenthal’s Stars and Stripes protest letter, this crisis is unthinkable. How can the world’s fourth richest man, Amazon founder and Post owner Jeff Bezos, justify decimating one of the nation’s finest newspapers on economic grounds, while affording everything else money can buy?
Joseph Pulitzer recognized that a strong and thriving press, focused on facts and honest reporting, was essential to the functioning of a participatory democracy. It’s the undecided voters, after all, who determine the outcomes of national elections. If they stop trusting the credibility of the news, and cynically stop voting for even the lesser of two evils, authoritarianism takes root. It’s unfolding before our eyes.
But if there is a silver lining in the state of today’s press, it’s that citizen fact gatherers have become legion. Some acts of outrageous government malfeasance occur in broad daylight, like George Floyd’s suffocation, Renee Good’s and Alex Pretti’s killings by trigger-happy ICE officers. In our “small-d” democratic nation, ordinary citizens—the press for a day—are contributing invaluably.
Now, when nearly everyone is an emergency journalist, there’s a good chance that the truth will come out. Let’s hope this will be enough to prevent Joseph Pulitzer’s worst fears.