Newspapers exist to push out news to the public, but it’s not a one-way affair. They also provide a platform for comments from the readers. Any hindrance to that flow is cause for concern. That concern is felt keenly by Stars and Stripes, which offers servicemembers a unique outlet for their opinions and grievances.

The House of Representatives is mad as hell at the Pentagon and is not going to take it anymore. At least it's mad at what an amendment passed Thursday claims is the DOD's attempts to create propaganda to make the administration look good in the Iraq war.

Yet another poll has come out on what the public thinks about the media's coverage of the Iraq war. Sponsored by the Poynter Institute and conducted by Zogby International, the survey questioned 8,683 adults in the States.

Repeat -- in the States. So expect a difference between what those folks, civilians, told the pollsters and what servicemembers and their families overseas would be saying. Nevertheless, the results were interesting.

Stars and Stripes is kept busy enough assuring its reporters' access to military bases, and the flow of newsworthy information therefrom, without arguing on behalf of a Japanese newspaper with the same objectives.

But I will do that, at least in part. A Stripes article from Misawa Air Base in Japan said the Too Nippo, a Japanese language newspaper, was appealing a ban issued by the base last December on two of its reporters.

Mixed-up acronym alert:

In my latest blog -- regarding AFN ads -- the commercials referred to are from AAFES, not AFIS.

Sorry.

There's been a mini controversy over some ads that AFN has been airing overseas. Letter-writers have pointed to commercials for universities contracted with DOD, and for Stars and Stripes. Mention of a hot dog brand even made its way into an ad. The argument is that these favor commercial enterprises and therefore violate AFN's charter.

The network, by directive, is not supposed to have ads for commercial products. The universities are certainly that, as is the hot dog. Stars and Stripes isn't. It collects revenues but is not a for-profit enterprise.

Once again, a move is underway to ban the sale of certain adult magazines on U.S. military bases. Predictably, many troops are outraged.

We’re not talking here about what most people would call *****, the wild stuff. In question are magazines that feature photographs of nude or barely clad women, interspersed with articles on general subjects. Playboy and Penthouse are the ones usually put in this category.

Letter-writer George S. Robinson of Heidelberg threatens to take the riding crop to the "lazy" Stars and Stripes sports staff for not giving him enough coverage of the Kentucky Derby, run last week. He says there's too much "boring" baseball coverage, and even the National Hockey League gets more space than the Derby -- "the greatest two minutes in sports." The paper didn't even run a list of entries, he complains.

Something happened among the hallowed graves at Arlington National Cemetery on April 22 that could serve as a Rorschach test for people’s feelings about the Iraq war, government bureaucracy, the right to privacy, and the media.

What happened was the burial of a war hero, Lt. Col. William G. (Billy) Hall, a Marine killed by an improvised explosive device in Iraq on March 29.  It seems that Hall’s family was asked, as all families are in these circumstances, whether the media could be present. They said yes.

Reporters and cameramen were indeed present, but were only allowed to observe the pre-burial procession. They were held far away from the graveside service and the family, so far away that they could not hear the chaplain’s words or take close-up photographs.

Are Americans thinking less and arguing more? An opinion column and a letter-to-the-editor in Stars and Stripes raise that question. The column, by Susan Jacoby, was first published in the Los Angeles Times. It argues that Americans' reluctance to listen to opposing points of view is one of the factors causing what she sees as the dumbing down of American public life. The letter, from a soldier in Afghanistan, Sgt. Paul Wade, agrees with Jacoby and says the decline of newspapers is making the situation worse.