Pentagon Terminates Stars and Stripes Editor‑in‑Chief Amid Censorship Protests

The editor-in-chief of the Stars and Stripes U.S. military newspaper stated on Friday that he had been dismissed for insubordination, according to a source familiar with the matter who told Reuters that the Pentagon had issued termination notices to the newspaper’s leadership.

“According to the notice, I am being terminated for asserting in a CBS interview that any hypothetical censorship of service‑member news would represent a personal red line,” Erik Slavin said in a statement.

The source, who requested anonymity, added that Max Lederer, the newspaper’s longtime publisher who was scheduled to retire at the end of September, had also been removed.

In a retirement email sent this week, Lederer noted that the Pentagon’s new vision for the newspaper diverged from his own.

Lara Korte, a Middle East reporter for the newspaper, announced on social media on Friday that she had been dismissed, stating that she had informed CBS News that she works for Stars and Stripes rather than the Pentagon.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stars and Stripes, which has continuously published a newspaper since World War II and delivers news to U.S. service members worldwide, is funded by the Defense Department yet has historically maintained editorial independence.

The Pentagon recently appointed a military deputy to serve as the newspaper’s publisher. In an X post, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell quoted an open letter written by the deputy, which read: “We may never be able to achieve the same impact for our service members digitally as the paper did during World War II in a vastly different media landscape, but I also believe that we can and must do better for our most important constituency—the men and women who comprise the U.S. Armed Forces,”

During his first term, President Donald Trump reversed the Pentagon’s decision to shutter the newspaper entirely.

Press‑freedom advocates have criticized broader policy changes under the Trump administration that restricted journalists’ access to the Pentagon, arguing that these measures suppressed freedom of speech.

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