Two advisory board members of Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper that has long enjoyed editorial independence from the government, sued the Defense Department on Wednesday, alleging that an effort to impose new restrictions on the paper was an act of illegal censorship.
The complaint, filed in federal district court in Washington, comes from Susan “Suki” Dardarian and William “Bill” Church, two Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalists on the Stripes advisory board. Dardarian is a former editor and senior vice president of the Minnesota Star Triune, and Church is the executive editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper.
“Unlawfully censoring ‘the soldiers’ paper’ is an insult to the dedicated members of the armed forces and an attack on the freedom of speech — a foundational Constitutional principle for which those brave service people dedicate their lives," wrote Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward, which is representing the two plaintiffs.
