EDITORIAL NOTE
This is an opinion and analysis column based on reporting available Friday, August 21, 2026. Reported facts are sourced throughout. The Pentagon has confirmed the separation notices but, as of publication, has offered little public explanation beyond the personnel actions themselves.
There are words you expect to hear around the Pentagon. Deployment. Readiness. Chain of command. Insubordination certainly belongs on the list.
Journalism generally does not.
Yet on Friday, the Defense Department fired Stars and Stripes editor-in-chief Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer and Middle East reporter Lara Korte. Slavin says he was fired for insubordination because he publicly said censorship of the newspaper would cross a red line.
Read that again, because it sounds worse the second time.
Slavin wasn’t accused of publishing classified battle plans. He wasn’t accused of fabricating a story, endangering troops or handing information to an enemy. According to Slavin, his offense was saying that if the Pentagon ever ordered Stars and Stripes to replace accurate journalism with government-approved copy, “that would be a red line.”
Apparently somebody found the red line and decided to fire the guy standing next to it.
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THIS WASN’T A FRIDAY AFTERNOON TANTRUM
The most important detail may be the one that happened nine days earlier.
According to The Washington Post, Defense Department official Andrew Brey emailed Lederer on August 12 and asked him to fire Slavin and Korte because they participated in the CBS interview. Lederer didn’t do it. On Friday, all three received separation notices, with the Pentagon telling The Post that Lederer was fired for cause due to insubordination.
That’s considerably harder to wave away as routine management.
Korte’s supposedly troublesome contribution to that CBS interview was explaining who she worked for. She said she worked for Stars and Stripes, “not for the Pentagon,” and that her job was covering the military community.
There are scandals in Washington that require 14 flowcharts, three anonymous sources and a Sherpa to understand.
This isn’t one of them.
A reporter for an editorially independent military newspaper said she wasn’t a Pentagon spokesperson. The editor said censorship would be unacceptable. Their boss was told to fire them. He didn’t. Now the Pentagon is firing all three.
If somebody has a benign explanation for that sequence of events, this would be an excellent fucking time to share it.
THE “MODERNIZATION” THAT KEEPS LOOKING LIKE CONTROL
The Pentagon didn’t wake up Friday morning and suddenly discover Stars and Stripes.
In January, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced that the department would overhaul the publication and move it away from what he called “woke distractions.” In March, a Pentagon memo restricted the paper’s use of paid wire services such as the Associated Press and required its content to remain consistent with “good order and discipline,” language normally associated with military command and military justice.
That is a strange standard to hang over a newsroom.
Journalists aren’t supposed to maintain good order. They’re supposed to tell you when the barracks are falling apart, when military families are struggling, when weapons programs don’t work, when commanders screw up and when somebody in Washington would prefer you didn’t know any of those things.
CBS noted that Stars and Stripes has reported on deteriorating military housing, barracks problems, and alleged neglect at military child care facilities. That’s precisely why independence matters. A newspaper that can only publish stories flattering the institution it covers isn’t a newspaper for very long.
It becomes a newsletter from Human Resources with camouflage around the edges.
THEN THEY FIRED THE WATCHDOG
Congress created an ombudsman position specifically to help protect the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. Jacqueline Smith held that job.
In April, the Pentagon fired her after she publicly challenged the department’s restrictions on the newspaper. Smith has since sued, alleging retaliation and First Amendment violations. The government is contesting litigation surrounding its actions, so those allegations remain allegations, but the firing itself is not in dispute.
Then came another move.
This month the Pentagon installed active-duty Navy Capt. William Urban as deputy publisher without consulting Lederer, according to reporting and a letter from Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Elizabeth Warren and Jeanne Shaheen. The senators warned that putting an active-duty public affairs officer into senior leadership at an editorially independent publication raised obvious questions about separation from the military chain of command.
Lederer announced his retirement shortly afterward, saying his view of the mission of Stars and Stripes differed fundamentally from the Pentagon leadership’s direction for it. He had spent nearly two decades as publisher.
He wasn’t even allowed to finish the month.
THERE IS ANOTHER SIDE. IT ISN’T VERY REASSURING.
Urban says he was given repeated assurances that the Pentagon remains committed to the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. In an open letter Friday, he pointed to the paper’s recent reporting on poor conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as evidence that the department had not shut down unwanted coverage.
Fair enough. Put that in the record.
But here’s the problem.
You don’t demonstrate your commitment to an independent newsroom by firing the editor who publicly defended its independence, firing the reporter who said she doesn’t work for the Pentagon, firing the publisher who declined to fire them, firing the ombudsman who previously defended independence, and dropping an active-duty officer into senior management.
At some point the assurances begin having trouble competing with the evidence.
WHO IS STARS AND STRIPES SUPPOSED TO SERVE?
This is the question underneath everything else.
Stars and Stripes is unusual because it exists inside the military world while retaining a long tradition of editorial independence from the people running that world. It was first published during the Civil War and has continuously covered the American military community since World War II. Generations of troops stationed far from home have read it precisely because it isn’t supposed to be another command bulletin.
That arrangement inevitably produces tension.
Good.
Independent journalism that never irritates the institution it covers probably isn’t doing much journalism.
There is no contradiction between supporting the military and reporting honestly about it. In fact, service members may have a greater need for honest reporting than almost anybody else because decisions made inside that building can determine where they’re sent, what equipment they receive, where their families live and whether they come home.
They are adults entrusted with weapons, national security, and sometimes life-and-death decisions.
I think they can survive a newspaper.
THE WORD THEY CHOSE MATTERS
That’s what keeps bothering me about this.
Insubordination.
That word makes perfect sense when a service member refuses a lawful order. It makes considerably less sense when applied to civilian journalists defending editorial independence at a publication whose independence the government itself keeps insisting it respects.
Slavin wasn’t commanding a destroyer. Korte wasn’t flying an F-35. They worked for a newspaper.
And the minute a government starts treating journalistic independence as disobedience, we’ve moved into territory where the vocabulary itself should scare the hell out of us.
Because the opposite of an insubordinate newspaper is an obedient one.
We already have a word for that, too.
Propaganda.
THE RECORD
On August 21, 2026, the Defense Department sent separation notices to Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte. The Pentagon confirmed the actions and said the three employees have five days to appeal.
Slavin says he was fired for insubordination after publicly saying hypothetical Pentagon censorship would cross a red line. The Washington Post reports that a Defense Department official asked Lederer on August 12 to fire Slavin and Korte over their participation in the CBS interview.
The actions follow months of conflict over Stars and Stripes, including restrictions on wire-service content, the April firing of its congressionally mandated ombudsman and the appointment this month of an active-duty Navy captain as deputy publisher.
The Pentagon says it remains committed to the publication’s editorial independence. Its new deputy publisher says he received assurances of the same.
We’ll see.
FROM OFF SCRIPT: THE BULLSHIT DETECTOR
THE TARIFF JUST CONFESSED
Trump announced Friday that the United States will temporarily allow another 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to enter at lower tariffs in an attempt to reduce beef prices. That’s interesting, considering we’ve spent years being told foreign countries somehow absorb the cost of tariffs. If lowering a tariff is supposed to lower the price Americans pay at the grocery store, congratulations: somebody just accidentally explained who pays tariffs. American cattle producers, meanwhile, are furious that cheaper imports may hurt them.
NOW WE’RE INVESTIGATING THE INVESTIGATORS
The Justice Department has asked to interview FBI officials involved in the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search as part of a broader examination of past investigations of Trump, according to Reuters. The request is reportedly voluntary at this stage, which matters. It also matters that the sitting president’s Justice Department is revisiting law-enforcement actions that resulted in the recovery of classified material from his own property. Maybe investigators discover misconduct. If they do, show us. Until then, this deserves a microscope, not a shrug.
THE BALLROOM KEEPS BUILDING
Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily allowed construction on Trump’s White House ballroom to continue Friday while the Supreme Court considers the administration’s emergency appeal. Lower courts had moved to stop above-ground work amid a fight over whether Trump had authority to demolish the East Wing and proceed without congressional approval. The administration says the project is already roughly 65 percent complete. That’s one hell of an argument: We’ve already built most of the thing you’re questioning, so stopping now would be inconvenient.
AND NOW DORIS MILLER’S NAME MAY BE ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK
The Navy is considering changing the name of the future USS Doris Miller, with Trump’s name reportedly among the possibilities. No final decision has been announced. Miller, a Black sailor who fought back during the attack on Pearl Harbor despite having no formal training on the weapon he used, became the first Black recipient of the Navy Cross. The Navy itself announced in 2020 that CVN-81 would honor him. Maybe leave the man’s aircraft carrier alone.
AROUND TOM HICKS MEDIA
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Panic Room Sports checks the tape before joining whatever NFL panic everybody else has already declared a national emergency.
Rabbit Ears TV digs back into classic television, the shows we loved and the stories hiding behind them.
The Backlot Ghost opens its doors this morning. Every movie leaves something behind, and we’re going looking for it.
BUY ME A CUP OF TEA
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ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU GO
If the Pentagon can fire journalists at Stars and Stripes for publicly defending editorial independence, do you still believe the newspaper can remain genuinely independent?
Tell me what you think in the comments. I have a feeling this one is going to produce some opinions.
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