The editor-in-chief of US military newspaper Stars and Stripes has told the BBC of his concern over censorship a day after being dismissed by the US Department of Defense (DoD) for “insubordination”. “This is a time when we really need to hear what’s happening,” Erik Slavin said, adding that Pentagon officials appeared to be “less and less inclined to speak on the record”.
Slavin says he believes he was fired for having stated in an interview that “in a hypothetical situation, censorship would be a red line”. A reporter and the paper’s publisher were also sacked.
The Pentagon told the BBC it would not comment. But the sackings come amid tension between the Trump administration and the US media.
Even though partially funded by the Pentagon, Stars and Stripes has been editorially independent – through a congressional mandate and DoD rules.
The newspaper’s Middle East reporter Lara Korte said she had also been told she was fired.
Both Slavin and Korte say their dismissals – both for insubordination – relate to an interview they gave to CBS’s Sunday Morning programme last month, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS News.
Stars and Stripes reported that publisher Max Lederer was also fired.
He had announced his retirement on Tuesday, saying his understanding of the paper’s value and mission differed in “fundamental ways” from the Pentagon’s plans for the publication.
Slavin, who has worked for the paper for 21 years, told the PM programme that he had not been given an official explanation for his dismissal – and was considering his response even though he was not allowed to appeal.
He said he did not know if it had to do with his paper’s original reporting of conditions aboard USS Abraham Lincoln – the warship which has been deployed in the Gulf for months as the US-Israeli war with Iran continues.
The vessel has spent a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days and family members of sailors aboard have expressed concern about their mental health, with some sailors having reportedly attempted to jump overboard.
But Slavin said his dismissal came in a climate where the Pentagon had not had a press conference since May, and where journalists had refused attempts to interfere with their reporting.
For her part, Korte wrote on X: “It’s a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press.”
The president of the National Press Club, Mark Schoeff Jr, described Slavin’s firing as “another brazen attempt by the Pentagon to dictate coverage of the military and should be immediately reversed”.
An average of 1.4 million people consume Stars and Stripes’s content daily, mostly online, according to CBS.
The paper is still printed outside the US for members of the military in places with unreliable internet access.
In October, leading US news outlets rejected a new policy which barred journalists from entering the building unless they only reported information officially authorised by the DoD.
At the time, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the BBC were among the major outlets which said they would not agree to the new rules.
The Trump administration argued that the changes were needed to protect national security.
In April 2025, a US judge ordered the administration to restore the Associated Press’s access to presidential events after it was blocked in a dispute over the term “Gulf of America”.
A few months prior, the White House broke with tradition and took control of the press pool which covers the US presidency.
By BBC News
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