Editorial
Keep Your Euphoria to Yourself, Soldier
Published: November 7, 2008
In a stroke of self-satire, Pentagon officials tried to block Stars and Stripes — the military’s respected independent newspaper — from covering the troops’ plain and honest reactions to the election night news about their new commander in chief. The Department of Defense once again made news by smothering news.
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The boneheaded muzzling of the newspaper, which is protected by First Amendment guarantees against editorial interference, barred reporters assigned to do simple color stories from the public areas of military bases in order to “avoid engaging in activities that could associate the Department with any partisan election.”
Partisan? By that rationale, the civilian news media’s coverage of the spontaneous celebrations across the land on Tuesday night was an act of journalistic bias. It’s ludicrous that Pentagon brass feared men and women in uniform might be caught smiling, frowning or variously exclaiming “Whoopee!” or “Rats!” at voting results from the democracy they defend with their lives.
The good news is that Stars and Stripes found commanders in the Middle East and Europe that ignored the foolish directive, as if it were a premise for a “M*A*S*H” episode. When other commanders clamped down in Japan and South Korea, the paper properly took the ban as illegal under longstanding Congressional and military policies. Its reporters did their jobs until forced to stop.
By law, troops are allowed to express their political opinions in a nonofficial capacity. These days, they do so nonstop by name in blogs and newspaper letters. Even so, a Pentagon spokesman told the newspaper there’s no obligation to “assist with a story that chips away at the fundamental apolitical nature of the military.”
Inane is more apt than apolitical. The Pentagon should retreat from its head-in-the-sand posturing.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on November 7, 2008, on page A34 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/opinion/07fri4.html?ex=1383800400&en=b8bed94323b7e581&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook
