The Pentagon fired the top editor and a reporter at Stars and Stripes for insubordination, just days after both journalists publicly said the military had no right to control the newspaper’s content.
Quick Take
- The Pentagon fired editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte on August 21, 2026, citing insubordination.
- Publisher Max Lederer also left, saying his view of the paper’s mission clashed with the Defense Department’s direction.
- The firings follow months of Pentagon moves to restrict content, including a March memo limiting wire service stories and comics.
- Ombudsman Jacqueline Smith, whose job was created by Congress to protect the paper’s independence, was fired in April after criticizing those restrictions.
A Civil War Newspaper Runs Into a Modern Power Struggle
Stars and Stripes has covered American troops since the Civil War. For decades, it operated within the Pentagon’s budget but outside its editorial control, protected by federal rules that require independence from military public affairs.
That arrangement kept the paper trustworthy to service members who wanted honest news, not press releases dressed up as journalism. In 2026, that separation started to crack.
The Pentagon has fired three employees of Stars and Stripes, a military newspaper partly funded by taxpayers that has long operated with editorial independence, citing insubordination. Publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, and Reporter Lara Korte all said that… pic.twitter.com/4Nkl0w1rWS
— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) August 23, 2026
Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell announced in January that the paper would be “custom tailored to our warfighters,” dropping what he called “repurposed DC gossip columns” and Associated Press reprints.
Two months later, an eight-page Pentagon memo formalized the shift, expanding departmental oversight while claiming that the paper would remain editorially independent. Critics called that combination contradictory from the start.
The Ombudsman Sounded the Alarm First
Jacqueline Smith held a position Congress created in 1991 specifically to shield Stars and Stripes from political pressure. In April, she wrote a column accusing the Pentagon of censorship after officials barred the paper from running comics and outside wire copy.
Ten days later, the Pentagon fired her, giving no reason on her separation paperwork. She said plainly, “The Pentagon is trying to silence me.”
Smith’s removal drew attention from press freedom groups and members of Congress, who noted her role existed precisely to catch this kind of interference.
Retired military leaders also weighed in, warning that cutting troops off from independent reporting pushes them toward less reliable sources of information about their own government and military. That warning proved prophetic months later.
Leadership Falls, One by One
Publisher Max Lederer, who ran the paper for nineteen years, announced his retirement in August rather than continue under the new Pentagon direction. He said his “philosophy of leadership” no longer matched what the department wanted from the organization.
Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin followed just days later, fired for insubordination after telling CBS News that any hypothetical censorship of news for troops would be “a red line”.
Reporter Lara Korte was let go the same day as Slavin and Lederer, confirming her dismissal to reporters covering the story. Slavin maintains he was targeted specifically for defending editorial independence in that interview, not for any performance failure. A pending lawsuit over the Pentagon’s content restrictions adds another layer of scrutiny to the decisions that were made.
Why a Military Newspaper’s Independence Matters
Government-funded outlets always sit in an awkward spot. The money comes from taxpayers through the agency being covered, yet the reporting is supposed to hold that same agency accountable.
Congress built protections into Stars and Stripes decades ago because it understood troops deserve straight information, not messaging crafted by their own chain of command. Weakening that firewall affects morale and trust, not just newsroom politics.
A defense secretary reshaping a newsroom’s content and then firing the people who object looks less like routine management and more like the government punishing dissent.
Protecting a free press for service members, even one funded by the Pentagon, is exactly the kind of principle worth defending on its own merits.
Sources:
theamericanconservative.com, nbcnews.com, stripes.com, apnews.com, valawyersweekly.com, techtimes.com, washingtonpost.com, en.wikipedia.org
