Pentagon fires Stars and Stripes editor amid editorial independence row

Erik Slavin learned he was being fired on a Friday afternoon. The editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon's official military newspaper, received a notice of separation that he believed was punishment for the wrong kind of loyalty—loyalty to the newsroom rather than to the chain of command. He was not alone. Lara Korte, the paper's Middle East reporter, received the same notice. Max Lederer, the longtime publisher who had already announced his September retirement, got one too. By day's end, three people central to the newspaper's editorial operation were gone.

Slavin told the Associated Press that his termination was retaliation for speaking publicly about editorial independence. In a CBS interview, he had drawn a line: censoring news for service members would be a red line. That statement, he believed, was the reason he was fired. The Pentagon provides the funding for Stars and Stripes, but the newspaper has long maintained—and federal law requires—that it operate with editorial independence. Slavin stood by that principle even as it cost him his job. "I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department's own policies," he told AP.

The firings did not arrive in a vacuum. For months, the Trump administration had been tightening its grip on the newspaper's editorial direction. In January, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the department would return Stars and Stripes to its "original mission: reporting for our warfighters." The language was bureaucratic, but the intent was clear. The Pentagon would intervene to "refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale." Parnell promised the publication would focus on "warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability, and ALL THINGS MILITARY." No more Associated Press reprints. No more what he called DC gossip columns.

The pressure had already produced casualties. In April, Jacqueline Smith, the newspaper's ombudsman—the internal voice meant to advocate for ethics and independence—was fired. Around the same time, Navy Captain William Urban, a Pentagon spokesperson, was appointed deputy publisher, reportedly without Lederer's knowledge. When Lederer announced his resignation, he cited fundamental differences with the Pentagon's direction. Urban, now in his new role, published a letter on Friday praising the newspaper's World War II legacy of delivering "credible, editorially independent papers" to service members. But he criticized current management for being slow to embrace digital storytelling and pledged "modernization." "My commitment is to leave Stripes a better organization than the one I joined two weeks ago," he wrote.

The timing of the firings coincided with Stars and Stripes' most aggressive recent reporting. The newspaper had covered the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier on a record-long deployment since November, profiling sailors who expressed suicidal thoughts or attempted to jump overboard. The Trump administration dismissed such reports as overblown and "dishonest." That coverage—journalism in service of service members' welfare—appeared to be exactly the kind of reporting the Pentagon now wanted to prevent.

The reaction was swift. Chris Vaccaro, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, warned that Stars and Stripes could not fulfill its mission if journalists feared retaliation for independent reporting. "Service members and their families deserve journalism that is produced in their interests—not journalism shaped to serve the interests of the Pentagon," he said. Three Democratic senators—Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren, and Jeanne Shaheen—sent a joint letter to Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth demanding answers about the "degradation" of the newspaper's independence. They wrote that for generations, American service members, especially those overseas and in combat zones, had relied on Stars and Stripes for credible news. "That trust depends on preserving a clear separation between independent journalism and the Department's public affairs apparatus," they wrote.

The firings arrived as the Trump administration was already restricting press freedom more broadly. The Pentagon had limited journalists' access to its press office. Trump had launched lawsuits against AP, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and The New York Times over coverage disagreements. For a newspaper born in the 19th century and made famous covering World War II, the question now was whether it could survive as anything more than a Pentagon bulletin board.