Is America's Most Famous Military News Threatened? Stars and Stripes ("Stars and stripes") learned from the Pentagon, Monday, February 10, that cuts, in the unspecified amount, were envisaged in its operating budget – which represents 35% of its annual expenses with 7 million dollars. "The majority of the resources of "Stars and Stripes" come from sales, subscriptions and advertising ", journalists Corey Dickstein and Nikki Wentling wrote on the newspaper's website, but this one "Depends on the Ministry of Defense to cover reports and distribution abroad, costly and sometimes dangerous tasks".
Born in 1861 at the start of the American Civil War, Stars and Stripes, in its printed version, a weekly and numerous specials, risks being the victim of the federal budget bill presented by the White House on Monday. It demands $ 741 billion for defense in 2021, with savings of $ 6 billion in the end. "In the modern era, a newspaper is probably no longer the right way to communicate"said Elaine McCusker of the Pentagon. "The mission is not to communicate the message of the ministry or the command, but to be an independent publication in the service of the troop", replied on Twitter the mediator of Stars and Stripes, Ernie Gates.
"Credible information"
"The challenge is to serve a military community stationed around the world, which does not always have the capacity to pay and often resides in small towns where it is difficult to attract advertisers Explains to World the newspaper’s editor, Max Lederer. “This community nevertheless has great needs and wants credible information on the subjects that concern it. " Stars and Stripes reports having had, on average, 1.4 million daily readers in 2019.
Arrested after the American Civil War, the newspaper had reappeared in early 1918 in Paris. During the First World War, it contained poems written by the military or "Tips for adopting a war orphan". Among advertisers, at that time, American Express rubbed shoulders with Perrier. The team then produced figures from the American press, including Harold Ross, the founder of the magazine The New Yorker.
After a further halt, and a second renaissance in 1945, the newspaper has since continued to appear, according to soldiers everywhere, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Will Congress Barrage? In 2016, already, the budgetary ball had grazed the newspaper. Arizona Republican politician Martha McSally had stood up for her. This former pilot of an A-10 of the US Air Force (a legendary plane nicknamed the "Warthog", also threatened by the Pentagon cuts in 2021) wanted the GI’s to continue to have "News from home". And the House of Representatives had restored the threatened funding.
