Former Stars and Stripes publisher says critical coverage was ‘underlying cause’ of staff firings

TOKYO — Former Stars and Stripes publisher Max D. Lederer Jr. said Monday that the Pentagon used accusations of insubordination to justify firing three of the newspaper’s staffers when the real reason, he believes, was critical reporting that angered military leaders.

The Pentagon cited a July CBS News interview in separation notices issued Aug. 21 to chief editor Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte. During the interview, Slavin said his red line would be government censorship of accurate news, while Korte said she worked for Stars and Stripes, not the Pentagon or policymakers.

Lederer, whose notice cited his refusal to fire Slavin and Korte over the interview, said Monday that their CBS appearances gave the Pentagon a stated reason to terminate them, but there is more to the story.

“I believe the coverage was the real reason — the underlying cause of what’s happened,” he told reporters at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

The Pentagon denies the firings were retaliation for Stars and Stripes’ reporting and says the three were insubordinate.

Lederer pointed to an Aug. 11 article about conditions aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, which spent 208 consecutive days at sea, and coverage of the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Bahrain as examples of reporting he believes displeased military officials.

Former Stars and Stripes publisher Max D. Lederer Jr. speaks to a reporter at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, Sept. 14, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)

Lederer said those episodes showed Stars and Stripes was increasingly putting pressure on military leaders and “not telling the story they wanted to be heard in a way they wanted it to be heard.”

Lederer, Slavin and Korte filed suit on Aug. 27 against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell, the Defense Department and Pentagon public affairs official Andrew Brey. The lawsuit seeks to reverse the firings, alleging they were unlawful and retaliatory.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett Covington disputed the retaliation allegation during a Sept. 4 federal court hearing. He said the Pentagon began preparing separation notices for Slavin and Korte weeks before the Abraham Lincoln article was published.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden declined at that hearing to block the Pentagon from proceeding with the firings while the lawsuit continues.

Parnell wrote on X the following day that the journalists were speaking “with the government’s voice” and, therefore, were not protected by the First Amendment.

The Pentagon has “both the authority and the responsibility” to ensure Stars and Stripes remains focused on “warfighting, readiness, and the men and women who serve” rather than becoming a “platform for airing employee grievances,” he wrote.

The publication is owned and partly funded by the Pentagon, but federal regulations and department policy have for decades emphasized its editorial integrity.

Former Stars and Stripes publisher Max D. Lederer Jr. speaks to a reporter at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, Sept. 14, 2026. (Akifumi Ishikawa/Stars and Stripes)

Lederer said Monday that the plaintiffs intend to use the lawsuit’s discovery process to seek internal Pentagon emails, documents and “communication between public affairs officials” that could shed light on the reasons for the firings.

That will include communications involving Hegseth and Parnell, Lederer said.

“We’ll be seeking that information to further inform our lawsuit and the court, as well as the public,” he said.

Lederer stressed that McFadden’s Sept. 4 ruling concerned the plaintiffs’ request for preliminary relief and did not end the underlying case.

“We have more discovery to do,” Lederer said. “We have more arguments to make.”

Lederer said the lawsuit is ultimately about whether Stars and Stripes journalists can report critically on the military without fear of retaliation, rather than simply whether the three plaintiffs get their jobs back.

“If a reporter can be fired for saying she works for the newspaper and not a policymaker, or if an editor can be fired for saying that he refuses to use government propaganda, then no journalist in Stars and Stripes can report freely on conditions, on the readiness, on the welfare of American forces,” he said.