A trio of journalists at Stars and Stripes fired by the Pentagon a week after the paper reported on deteriorating conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln sued Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday, claiming retaliation and a violation of their First Amendment rights.
The journalists suing include Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer, editor-in-chief Erik Slavin and reporter Lara Korte. All three were fired last Friday for “insubordination.”
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Lederer, Slavin and Korte say they are being retaliated against for their reporting — as well as for “speaking up as private citizens” — after they were asked in a CBS News segment in July about editorial independence at Stars and Stripes, a federally funded but independent news outlet, under the Trump administration.
The outlet has been publishing since the days of the Civil War, but the Pentagon under Hegseth has steadily cracked down on press freedom, including by removing media offices, arbitrarily denying access to outlets that have long covered the Pentagon — including HuffPost — and demanding reporters agree to terms that amount to fealty and loyalty pledges.
In the July interview with CBS News, Korte said she worried there might be issues of censorship ahead, but stressed that she worked for Stars and Stripes, “not the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker.”
Slavin fielded a question about whether there were any “red lines” he would cross when it came to editorial independence for the outlet and stated that if he was told how to write a story by the Pentagon, that would be a red line.
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Slavin and Korte allege that their “personal opinions” weren’t well-received by the Defense Department, and their reporting a few weeks later about the U.S.S. Lincoln sealed their fate.
The Pentagon is facing multiple lawsuits, including one from Jacqueline Smith, Stars and Stripes’ former ombudsman and editorial watchdog. Smith sued in June, saying she was ousted a little over a week after publishing an opinion column that criticized Hegseth’s policy banning the use of stories, features, columns, editorial cartoons and comic strips from “commercial news media.”
According to Lederer, the publisher, both Slavin and Korte had received his approval to do the CBS News interview, and he had refused the Pentagon’s requests to fire them. Before he was fired himself, Lederer had announced he would retire by the end of September.
The three have asked a federal judge to block their firings while the lawsuit moves forward.
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“In no way” did their speech or reporting “imped[e] government efficiency” or harm the government, the journalists argue, but the Pentagon’s decision to terminate them has an unquestionable chilling effect.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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