Pentagon fires the Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief and its Middle East reporter

What happened

Erik Slavin told The Associated Press that he was dismissed for insubordination after an interview he gave objecting to potential censorship by the U.S. military, and that he was being fired "for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line." Middle East reporter Lara Korte participated in the same interview and said on X that the Department of Defense was firing her for insubordination after she told a CBS reporter that she works for Stars and Stripes — "not the Pentagon, not the administration, and not any policy maker." Slavin told the AP that his refusal to accept military censorship was cited in his termination notice as insubordination. A notice of separation also went to longtime publisher Max Lederer, who had announced earlier that week that he would retire at the end of September. The Pentagon partly funds the newspaper. The firings extend a documented sequence: in April the Pentagon fired the newspaper's ombudsman, Jacqueline Smith, whose job had been to safeguard editorial independence, and Navy Captain William Urban was installed as military deputy to the publisher.

Why it matters

A newsroom the Department of Defense partly funds is one the department can staff. Removing its editor and one of its reporters after they publicly drew a line at censorship makes editorial independence a condition of continued employment rather than a settled expectation, and it does so at the level of the person who decides what the paper covers.

Receipt details

• Phase 1
• Silence the watchdogs
• Punish critical news coverage