Iran war coverage led to firings at Stars and Stripes, former publisher says
Max Lederer, the former publisher of Stars and Stripes who was fired by the Trump administration from the military-focused newspaper last month, said on Monday that the paper’s critical coverage of the war in Iran was the “underlying cause” of the firings.
Stars and Stripes is partly funded by the Pentagon, and the journalists there are government employees, but it has historically maintained editorial independence.
Lederer said this has put the paper at odds with previous administrations, but it never relented.
Lederer, along with editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte, were dismissed on Aug. 21. The Pentagon said the cause of the firings was insubordination, stemming from Slavin and Korte’s appearance in an interview on CBS News defending the publication’s independence.
Speaking at a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo, Lederer said he believes the paper’s recent coverage, including a story about deteriorated conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier during a record-breaking deployment in the Middle East — was the true reason they were fired.
Following the story’s publication, Lederer said the Pentagon instructed him to fire Slavin and Korte. After he chose not to, the Pentagon instead fired all three staff members.
“I believe the coverage was the real reason — the underlying cause of what’s happened,” Lederer said.
The recently dismissed staffers have since sued the federal government, saying the firings last week violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment and a law regulating government administrative policies.
Korte previously covered state politics for POLITICO in California. The Pentagon also fired an ombudsman in April who is supposed to report to Congress.
At a hearing on Sept. 4, a federal judge refused to block the terminations. Following the decision, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the decision aligns with First Amendment jurisprudence.
“Stars and Stripes is a Department of War publication funded to inform the military community,” Parnell said in a statement on social media. “The Department has both the authority and the responsibility to ensure it remains focused on the force — warfighting, readiness, and the men and women who serve — rather than becoming a platform for airing employee grievances.”
The Pentagon said it has no further comment on Monday beyond Parnell’s statements.
Lederer said the lawsuit will continue and is currently in discovery, and the staffers are also asking for back pay in addition to getting their job back.
“This is not about the three of us,” he said of the lawsuit. “It’s about whether service members … they want to know and they want to believe they can rely on an independent, credible and impartial press.”
“It’s about whether the military and civilian journalists at Stars and Stripes can do their jobs without fear of retaliation,” Lederer added.
He also warned against the chilling effect of the firings, as well as the restrictions the Pentagon has placed on news organizations since President Donald Trump’s second term, trying to restrict news organizations’ ability to cover the military critically.
In an article in The Atlantic last week, Slavin, the ousted editor-in-chief, echoed the need for independent journalism focused on the military and said the Pentagon “has articulated a remarkably narrow view of press freedom.”
“The government may stop short of censoring an individual story,” Slavin wrote. “But it will seek to fire newsroom leaders for opposing the replacement of accurate reporting with press releases. It will strip an organization of basic reporting tools it deems unnecessary or distasteful. And it will discredit the source of the reporting if a story is perceived as unflattering to the president or his secretary of defense.”