Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs

Roles and Responsibilities

• Serves as the principal spokesperson for the Department of Defense and is the sole release authority for official DoD information to news media representatives.
• Ensures free flow of information to the news media, service members and families, Congress, partners, and the general public at large.
• Develops and maintains relationships with the news media based on trust and integrity, on behalf of the Department leadership, to ensure honest forthright reporting about the Department.
• Provides the critical link between DoD and the American people to ensure the efforts of service members are told in a timely and accurate manner and that information is only constrained by national security requirements.
• Responsible for ensuring media representatives are given maximum access to ongoing military operations, including in Iraq and Afghanistan, to provide fair and accurate reporting.
• Develops communications policies, plans, and programs in support of DoD objectives and operations.
• Integrates social and online media tools into the department’s communication strategy to maximize our ability to communicate timely information to traditional and non-traditional audiences.

Press Operations

• Provides expert advice and counsel to the Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Secretary, the Under Secretaries and every key organization with the DoD to ensure timely and accurate information is provided to the media, Congress, and the public at large.
• In 2010, conducted more than 200 press briefings in the Pentagon Briefing Room per year including 13 briefings by the Secretary of Defense; supported 41 press briefings during Secretary of Defense travels.
• Coordinates and releases approximately 1,250 news releases/advisories a year.
• Arranges more than 1,200 media interviews and responded to thousands of queries, resulting in a countless number of press articles, broadcasts, and online media postings.
• Provides guidance to the communications shops for all the Services, CoComs and Under Secretaries of Defense on media issues to include formal exercise and contingency operations public affairs guidance.

  Speechwriting

• Prepares more than 50 major speeches and congressional testimonies each year to communicate the Secretary’s goals and priorities for the Department in a way that has impact in the media, the general public and within the U.S. military.

  Communications Planning and Integration (CPI)

• Interfaces with planners in OSD Policy, Joint Staff, Combatant Commands, military services, and the inter-agency to develop communication plans and strategies that accurately reflect U.S. policy goals, objectives and facts.
• Serves as the key communication planning integrator for the DoD and serves as its lead on communication planning interactions with other U.S. Government elements.

  Community Relations

• Maintains engagement with more than 200 national, regional and local nonprofit organizations that support our service members and military families and provides guidance and counsel to worldwide DoD offices overseeing 2,300 Family Readiness volunteers and coordinators.
• Receives and responds to over 50,000 public queries annually via web, phone, hard copy letters; responds to 2,900 annual public requests for commercial use of DoD imagery.
• Responds to approximately 800 queries per year from non-profit/VSO leadership, congressional offices.
• Conducts the Pentagon tour program for 136,000 visitors per year.
• Conducts the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, a twice annual five-day program that connects prominent business and community leaders with senior military officials and troops on the ground.

  [Defense Media Activity]

• Communicates messages from senior DoD leaders to support and improve quality of life and morale, promote situational awareness, provide timely and immediate force protection information, and sustain readiness. DMA consists of 2,400 employees and has an annual budget of more than $200 million to provide the following services:
• American Forces Radio and Television Service, also known as American Forces Network, broadcasts multiple television and radio channels providing a "touch of home" for nearly one million members of the military and their families deployed or stationed in 177 countries, to include Afghanistan and Iraq and Navy ships at sea.
• American Forces Press Service covered and produced print and imagery products covering DoD, JCS, combatant command events, news, and information that was posted to the primary DoD public web sites. AFPS was shuttered during a 2015 internal realignment. Its reporting was merged with that of other DMA production elements into a new organization named DOD News, which was in turn shuttered during a 2018 internal realignment. DMA's DOD-level reporting organization is now named Defense.gov.
• Stars and Stripes is a news and information organization that serves military audiences world-wide. Annual distribution of the newspaper is 33 million copies. Stripes is a journalistic and editorially independent publication provided free to deployed troops.
• Defense Visual Imagery Management Operations Center collects, distributes and archives on a real-time basis combat camera still and motion imagery depicting U.S. military activities and operations worldwide.
• Defense Information School provides initial and advanced public affairs and visual information training for military and civilian students of all services and international partners. DINFOS has an annual student load of more than 3200 students and 30 courses of study.
• Public Web supports and manages the hosting for nearly 600 OSD, JCS, combatant command, and military service public-facing web sites.

  History

Office Holders

Budget

Budget Totals