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Days after his sudden firing by the Pentagon, the former editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes told CBS News that “time will tell” whether the military newspaper will remain editorially independent from the government agency it covers.
The Defense Department delivered termination notices last week to Stars and Stripes Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer and Middle East reporter Lara Korte, accusing them of insubordination. The dismissals raised questions about the future of the paper, which is partly funded by U.S. taxpayers but has historically operated independently.
In an interview Monday on CBS News’ “The Takeout with Major Garrett,” Slavin called the termination notice a “real shock” and a “very unexpected” development. Slavin had worked at the Stars and Stripes for just over two decades, serving as a reporter and bureau chief before being promoted to editor-in-chief last fall.
The stated reason for his firing, Slavin said, was his appearance last month in a “CBS Sunday Morning” report on the Trump administration’s push to overhaul Stars and Stripes. Slavin was asked if there were any lines that he would not cross, and he said a demand from the military not to publish a “perfectly accurate story” would be a “red line.”
On Monday, Slavin called those comments a “hypothetical response, in my personal opinion, as to what would be my red line. And I described censorship, which I believe to be in line with Department of Defense regulations and the law itself.”
Stars and Stripes was first published during the Civil War, and in recent decades, the paper has prided itself on its editorial independence — meaning the federal government does not dictate what it can and can’t publish.
Roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ $29 million annual budget comes from taxpayers, a person familiar with the newspaper’s operations told CBS News last week. Readership has declined since its peaks during the Vietnam War, the Cold War and World War II, according to two U.S. officials, but an average of 1.4 million people see Stars and Stripes each day. Print editions overseas also reach service members in remote locations.
Slavin described the paper’s goal as giving service members “the straight truth.”
“They hold us accountable every day,” Slavin said of the paper’s readers. “If we get something that doesn’t correspond with their lived experience, they call us out on it real fast.”
“We never think, really, in terms of positive and negative, but I can certainly see why maybe the Pentagon would. But we don’t shy away from that, we look for what’s new, different, interesting and relevant to service members,” he added.
Earlier this year, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the Defense Department would make sweeping changes to the paper. He vowed to “modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.” The Pentagon later sought to stop the paper from running syndicated articles by wire services, Slavin has said.
Last week, Lederer told colleagues he planned to retire at the end of September, citing fundamental differences with the Trump administration. And on Friday, Lederer, Slavin and Korte were terminated.
Slavin told CBS News: “I certainly hope [Stars and Stripes] can remain independent in some way. I haven’t given up on that, but time will tell, and I think there needs to be a reckoning.”
Shortly after the firings, Stars and Stripes published an open letter from Navy Capt. William Urban, who said he was tapped to serve as military deputy to the publisher. Urban wrote that his priorities were to produce “the highest quality of editorially independent reporting,” while modernizing the paper and boosting its advertising revenue.
Asked about Urban’s letter and his pledge to keep the paper independent, Slavin said he’s “not sure” how to square it with this year’s push to change the paper’s operations.
Korte — the Middle East reporter who was fired alongside Slavin for sitting for a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview — said in a separate interview with CBS News on Monday that she has “certainly been bolstered to see comments from the Stripes’ leadership and from the Pentagon that the Stripes is editorially independent.”
“Obviously that’s something that has to be instituted in practice, and I think that’s something we’re going to get an answer on in the coming weeks and months,” she said.
The Pentagon has made other changes to how the military can be covered.
Last year, reporters who cover the Pentagon were told that in order to maintain daily access to the building, they would need to sign on to a host of rules, including a restriction on “soliciting” sensitive information from military personnel. CBS News and many other media outlets declined to sign the policy, leading dozens of reporters to turn in their press credentials. The Pentagon has denied that it is seeking to control what reporters can publish, calling the rules necessary to prevent harmful leaks.
A judge struck down many of the new rules earlier this year, and the military replaced them with a requirement that all journalists be escorted while inside the Pentagon.
Slavin told CBS News that “there used to be a time … where in the Pentagon, it was very simple for military officials to talk with journalists very frankly.”
“I think it contributed to the nation’s knowledge of what the U.S. military was doing, and I fear that we’re losing that,” he said.
