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Stars and Stripes on Pentagon chopping block

Earlier this month I reported on how Stars and Stripes faces increasing pressure to stay relevant in an era of soaring costs, fierce digital competition and declining circulation amid the drawdown of wars and Pentagon budget cuts.

Now Stars and Stripes reports the Pentagon may be considering the elimination of the iconic military newspaper and the Pentagon Channel, as well as programming cuts to American Forces Network. The Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office has been tasked with reviewing spending on all such media products as part of a top-to-bottom spending review ordered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer told the paper budget officials have been making unprecedented requests for information:

He said [he has] been tasked with providing budget numbers and scenarios for cuts — sometimes given just hours to do so — without being told why the review was under way. “When you get asked questions in a vacuum,” Lederer said, “you get concerned.”

In October, Lederer announced major cost-saving measures, including cutting 40 positions, as federal funding - some 30 percent of its total budget - was expected to fall next year to $7.4 million.

Stripes, an editorially independent function of the Pentagon's Defense Media Activity, is well regarded for its quality journalism but has had some tense relations with the Pentagon. Last year, the paper successfully protested a move to DMA's Ft. Meade headquarters and in 2009, the paper won a Polk award for its investigation into the Rendon Group, a public relations firm hired by the military to profile and evaluate journalists in attempt to steer coverage in ways favorable to the Pentagon.

Some of the paper's biggest defenders have always been in Congress. Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) both told Stars and Stripes that they have not been apprised of any review of the Pentagon's media activities, but don't like the idea of cutting the paper. Both senators sit on the Armed Services Committee.

“I had just heard rumors,” McCain said. “But I think it would be a terrible mistake, I really do."

“I certainly acknowledge [the Pentagon has] some really difficult choices ahead, and I’d want to look at it, but I think an independent editorial voice like Stars and Stripes provides is pretty darn important for transparency and accountability and oversight in the military," McCaskill said.

Price Floyd, who directed media affairs at the Pentagon in 2009 and 2010, told the Stars and Stripes it’s past time for a strategic review of Pentagon media products.

“Do the men and women of the armed services deserve an editorial voice that is free of influence from the Pentagon? Absolutely,” he said. “Does it have to be Pentagon funded? No.”

Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.