Three journalists at the federally funded but independent Stars and Stripes news organization sued the government on Thursday, claiming that the Pentagon fired them in retaliation for writing about the worsening conditions inside a Navy aircraft carrier deployed to the Middle East.
The journalists accused the government of violating their First Amendment right to free speech, asking the U.S. District Court in Washington to reject their terminations as well as new Pentagon policies that they say severely limit the editorial independence of their work.
The lawsuit is the latest in a streak of public pushbacks against the Pentagon’s efforts to exert control over the storied newspaper, which started publishing during the Civil War and has had a long history of independent reporting.
The publication has reported extensively on difficulties faced by military communities as the war in Iran has dragged on. The challenged terminations were first discussed a day after Stars and Stripes journalists reported on hardships that Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier whose deployment was extended to nine months, according to the complaint. President Trump has denied reporting on the carrier’s troubles from Stars and Stripes and other news outlets as “fake news.”
The lawsuit “seeks to prevent the blatant violation of the First Amendment rights of these journalists and challenges the U.S. Department of Defense’s extraordinary censorship efforts,” the three journalists said in the complaint.
The Department of Defense declined to comment. Capt. William Urban, who became the military deputy to Stars and Stripes’ publisher earlier this month, said in a letter published last week that his priority was to ensure “the highest quality of editorially independent reporting.” Captain Urban had previously served as a senior spokesman for the Defense Department and NATO.
Captain Urban told senior leadership at Stars at Stripes last week that he would eventually assume the role as the publisher, according to an official who is not authorized to speak about the matter.
For months, the Defense Department has faced public disagreements on its new operations policy on Stars and Stripes from the news outlet’s members.
In June, the newspaper’s editorial watchdog, Jacqueline Smith, filed a lawsuit after being fired, which she attributed to having publicly criticized the Pentagon leadership for editorial interference. Several members of the publisher’s advisory board also sued the Defense Department that month for adopting policies that banned Stars and Stripes from publishing comics and wire reprints.
In July, CBS News interviewed the paper’s editor in chief, Erik A. Slavin, and its Middle East correspondent, Lara S. Korte, for a news segment on accusations of editorial interference at Stars and Stripes.
Earlier this month, the publisher, Max D. Lederer Jr., who had given Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte permission for the CBS interview, refused to fire them despite the urging of the Pentagon. After continued pressure, Mr. Lederer announced that he would retire by Sept. 30 and issued public statements on his strife with the Pentagon leadership. He was fired last Friday.
Ms. Korte and Mr. Slavin were also given termination notices last Friday, which cited insubordination and an unauthorized media appearance. In a statement at the time, Mr. Slavin said, “According to the notice, I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.”
Mr. Lederer’s termination notice charged him with insubordination for refusing to deliver the notices of dismissal, according to the complaint.
Mr. Lederer, Ms. Korte and Mr. Slavin are now challenging their dismissals in court.
Their lawsuit says the Defense Department moved to fire Mr. Slavin and Ms. Korte a day after Stars and Stripes published an article on the Abraham Lincoln, detailing how its sailors endured food and water shortages, disrupted mail service, long workdays, little time off and poor physical and mental health as a result of the carrier’s extended deployment.
For decades, federal regulations and Pentagon policy emphasized editorial integrity of Stars and Stripes, requiring “a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.” Congress created the watchdog position in 1991, designing it to report directly to lawmakers and to ensure the publication’s independent reporting, acting after repeated attempts by military commanders who tried to censor the paper’s content in the 1980s.
During World War II, when General George Patton tried to dismiss a Stars and Stripes cartoonist for poking fun at the general’s order that soldiers be shaved clean even during combat, General Dwight D. Eisenhower dissuaded him.
“Stars and Stripes is the soldiers’ paper,” Eisenhower told Patton, “and we won’t interfere.”
In January, the Pentagon rescinded that 20-page regulation in its entirety. Its chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post that Stars and Stripes, which is primarily read by U.S. service members and their families, must “refocus its content away from woke distractions.” That same month, the Defense Department started asking applicants to Stars and Stripes to say how they would support Mr. Trump’s policies in their work.
In March, the Pentagon issued a memo banning the paper from running comics and reprinting articles from The Associated Press. The memo said Stars and Stripes’s news articles “must be consistent with good order and discipline of the military.” Critics say that language suppresses certain speech.
The journalists are calling now asking the judge to “declare unlawful” the March memo and the January deletion of regulations on the newspaper operations.
