Pentagon fires ombudsman overseeing military newspaper after calling it 'woke'

Source: msn/Washington Post

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Three months after the Pentagon decried the U.S. military newspaper Stars and Stripes as “woke” and announced it would be overhauled, Defense Department official Sean Parnell fired the publication’s ombudsman, a role charged by Congress with safeguarding the paper’s editorial independence.

In a Thursday message to Stars and Stripes staff reviewed by The Washington Post, the paper’s ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, said the Defense Department fired her without giving a reason.

However, Smith said she believed she was fired for speaking out against the decision to overhaul Stars and Stripes, announced by chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell in January, a decision she said threatened the storied paper’s long-held independence. “I knew it was risky to speak out, but my responsibility to Stripes and the First Amendment was paramount,” Smith wrote in the message to staff.

Stars and Stripes staffers are Defense Department employees but have for decades operated without Pentagon interference in editorial decisions. In March, a department memo outlining a “modernization” drive for the publication included a requirement that all content be consistent with “good order and discipline,” a phrase used in military justice.

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/pentagon-fires-ombudsman-overseeing-military-newspaper-after-calling-it-woke/ar-AA21A6ak