Get their jobs back?

Fired Stars and Stripes journalists sue Pentagon to get their jobs back

The ousted publisher, editor-in-chief and a senior reporter say their firings violated their free speech rights as well as a law regulating government administrative policies.

By Jalen Beckford

Three fired staffers of Stars and Stripes are suing the government to get their jobs back, arguing they were illegally dismissed over coverage of deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in an outlet that has historically provided independent coverage of the military.

In the suit, filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, the ousted publisher, along with the editor-in-chief and a reporter, say their firings last week violated their free speech rights under the First Amendment, as well as a law regulating government administrative policies.

Included as defendants in the suit are Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell and the Department of Defense, which provides funding to the publication that has long maintained editorial independence from the government.

Four legal organizations filed the suit on behalf of the ousted staffers.

“The Pentagon is trying to punish journalists for defending the established mission of Stars and Stripes,” Taryn Wilgus Null, senior counsel at Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the organizations, said in a statement. “Service members and their families need reporting that is independent of the officials it covers and is unafraid to criticize them when they deserve it.”

Publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte were dismissed on Aug. 21 over what the Pentagon characterized as insubordination stemming from an interview in which the journalist and her editor defended the editorial independence at the publication.

Slavin and Korte, a former reporter with POLITICO, said they were expressing their personal opinions in the July 5 interview with CBS News, and that the statements aligned with the Defense Department’s “own longstanding insistence” on the independence of Stars and Stripes.

They also noted the timing of their firings, which occurred weeks after the CBS interview but shortly after their outlet’s critical reporting on the Lincoln, where conditions for service members have allegedly deteriorated during a record-breaking Middle East deployment.

Lederer says he was directed by the Pentagon to fire Korte and Slavin a day after an Aug. 11 story on the Lincoln was published by the paper. The longtime publisher refused and decided to retire, later expressing in an interview with Stars and Stripes his concerns about the direction of the publication.

A Pentagon spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Slavin and Korte ask in the suit to be reinstated to their positions.

The case marks just the latest dispute between the Defense Department and the press corps under President Donald Trump. Since Hegseth took over the department, restrictive press guidelines led journalists from dozens of organizations to give up their Pentagon press credentials. The department has since offered credentials to a new group of mostly right-wing outlets.

In June, the Pentagon deemed its press office a classified space and off-limits to journalists, ostensibly to make room for speechwriters.

“The Defense Department’s move to control Stars and Stripes is in step with its move against the Pentagon Press Corps,” David Schulz, director of the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School, one of the organizations that filed the suit, said in a statement.

“This Administration does not want an effective or independent press,” Schulz said. Its crackdown means the public today has less information about our military’s plans, purposes, actions, or accomplishments than at any point in modern history, even as active combat operations are being pursued in multiple arenas across the globe.”