Pentagon Purge Silences Military Paper

Camouflage military cap resting on an American flag — MILITARY PAPER SILENCED?

The Pentagon just fired the editor and a reporter at the military’s own newspaper for saying, out loud, that they wouldn’t accept censorship.

Quick Take

The Pentagon fired Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte on Friday, August 21, citing insubordination.
Publisher Max Lederer had already announced his retirement after clashing with the Pentagon over editorial control.
An earlier March memo restricted the paper from using wire services like the Associated Press and from running comics.
Ombudsman Jacqueline Smith, whose job Congress created to protect the paper’s independence, was fired in April with no reason given.

A 160-Year-Old Newspaper Faces a New Chain of Command

Stars and Stripes has covered American troops since the Civil War. Congress has long required it to stay editorially independent from the Pentagon, even though the Defense Department funds it.

That arrangement cracked in January when spokesperson Sean Parnell announced the paper would be “refocused” toward warfighting topics, ending what he called “repurposed DC gossip columns” and “Associated Press reprints”.

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

Two months later, the Pentagon followed up with something more concrete than a social media post. An eight-page memo, dated March 9, expanded Defense Department oversight while claiming to preserve the paper’s independence.

It barred Stars and Stripes from running wire service content and comics, according to reporting on the internal policy. Critics called that combination contradictory on its face.

Firings Followed Public Pushback, Not Silence

Editor-in-chief Erik Slavin told he believes he was fired for telling CBS News that any hypothetical censorship of news for troops would be a “red line” he wouldn’t cross. He said the Pentagon called it insubordination.

Reporter Lara Korte confirmed to CNN she was let go the same day, alongside Slavin and Lederer. Slavin said he stands by editorial independence “as required by law and by the department’s own policies”.

Publisher Max Lederer had announced his retirement weeks earlier, after 19 years running the paper. He said his own leadership philosophy and understanding of the paper’s mission differed “in fundamental ways” from the Department of Defense’s vision for where it wanted to take it. It was reported the Pentagon had already been weighing his removal before he could leave on his own terms.

The Ombudsman Congress Built Was Cut Loose First

Before any of the August firings, the Pentagon removed the one official specifically created to guard against this exact scenario. Congress established the Stars and Stripes ombudsman role in 1991 to protect editorial freedom.

Jacqueline Smith held that job until April, when she received a separation notice with five days’ warning and no explanation.

Smith had just published a column criticizing the Pentagon’s decision to pull comics from the paper, calling it unlawful content control. She said the March memo blocked Stars and Stripes from running wire service stories from outlets like the Associated Press and the New York Times, and she labeled the restrictions “censorship” and “controlling what the troops can read”. Ten days after that column, she was gone.

Retired Officers and Advocacy Groups See a Pattern, Not an Accident

Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling warned that squeezing independent journalism at Stars and Stripes could push deployed troops toward less reliable sources and hurt morale.

PEN America framed the string of firings, starting with Smith and ending with Slavin and Korte, as part of a broader effort to interfere with a publication founded during the Civil War, months after the Pentagon publicly labeled it “woke”.

The Pentagon insists it is modernizing a newsroom, not muzzling one, and that Stars and Stripes remains free of censorship or propaganda under its own stated policy.

But three of the people closest to that newsroom, its top editor, its publisher, and its congressionally mandated watchdog, all left within months of each other after raising the same concern in public. Troops overseas deserve a paper that reports to them, not one that reports for headquarters.