from the proving-the-point dept
To say that Donald Trump has been waging an ideological war against the American free press would be an understatement in the extreme. Even attempting to list out the many, many ways in which he has attempted to threaten, sue, undermine, stifle, chill, attack, and hamstring media outlets would be a waste of time. No thinking person fails to understand that he hates any media outlets that don’t behave like full sycophants and no reasonable person thinks that his actions are a positive for the country.
But sometimes his administration really does endeavor to show just how corrupt and against the First Amendment it is, in the starkest possible terms. Stars & Stripes is a news outlet partially funded by the Pentagon. It is under congressional mandate to operate on 1st Amendment principles and describes its work like this:
Stars and Stripes provides independent news and information to the U.S. military community, including active-duty servicemembers, DoD civilians, veterans, contractors, and their families. Stars and Stripes retains its editorial independence and is congressionally mandated to be governed by First Amendment principles, but it is part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity. The Pentagon funding that makes up roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ annual budget is primarily used to print and distribute the newspaper to troops scattered across the globe, including in warzones such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The remainder of the news organization’s funding comes from advertising and subscriptions.
Earlier this year, however, a Pentagon spokesman said the administration planned to overhaul Stars & Stripes, with a specific aim to remove content it considered to be “woke distractions that siphon morale” and instead, presumably, force in content that does the opposite. If any of that sounds like an encroachment on editorial independence, congratulations, you have a working prefrontal cortex.
Erik Slavin has worked at Stars & Stripes for over two decades and was named Editor in Chief in 2025. He recently sat for an interview with CBS and was asked about the Pentagon’s stated aim to interfere in the editorial content of the paper. While noting that he had no idea what “woke content” the Pentagon was objecting to and what the standard for that would be, because nobody at the Pentagon bothered to tell him, he indicated that any attempt to censor the paper by the Pentagon would be his red line and counter to both the law and Pentagon policy that the paper be independent.
So of course Pete Hegseth fired him.
The Pentagon on Friday fired the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes and a top reporter for insubordination after they spoke publicly against any interference by the Defense Department in the military news outlet that has a long history of editorial independence. It was the latest move by an administration that has grown increasingly aggressive toward the news media.
Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” Korte participated in the same interview.
“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent, as required by law and by the department’s own policies,” Slavin said.
This is a newspaper with a long, long history. It has been publishing since the American Civil War. It has endured despite the ire of military men far greater than its current whiskey-soaked Secretary of Defense/War/Whatever. General George Patton once tried to ban the paper over cartoons depicting American soldiers in a way he didn’t like, only to have General Eisenhower tell him to calm the hell down and not interfere.
The skin of people like Trump and Hegseth is apparently as thin as the paper upon which Stars & Stripes is printed. To so perfectly encapsulate their own anti-speech desires by firing someone simply for saying he wouldn’t bow to government censorship is significant, though unsurprising.
Meanwhile, American military members appear to be losing a news outlet that focuses on them.
Filed Under: dod, donald trump, free press, free speech, journalism, pete hegseth
Companies: stars & stripes