Even though partially funded by the Pentagon, Stars and Stripes has been editorially unbiased – through a congressional mandate and DoD guidelines.

The newspaper’s Middle East reporter Lara Korte said she had also been informed she was fired.

Both Slavin and Korte say their dismissals – both for insubordination – relate to an interview they gave to CBS’s Sunday Morning programme last month, according to the BBC’s US associate CBS News.

Stars and Stripes reported that writer Max Lederer was also fired.

He had announced his retirement on Tuesday, saying his understanding of the paper’s worth and mission differed in “fundamental ways” from the Pentagon’s plans for the publication.

Slavin, who has labored for the paper for 21 years, informed the PM programme that he had not been given an official clarification for his dismissal – and was contemplating his response even though he was not allowed to attraction.

He said he did not know if it had to do with his paper’s authentic reporting of situations aboard USS Abraham Lincoln – the warship which has been deployed in the Gulf for months as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran continues.

The vessel has spent a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days and relations of sailors aboard have expressed concern about their psychological well being, with some sailors having reportedly tried to bounce overboard.

But Slavin said his dismissal came in a local weather where the Pentagon had not had a press convention since May, and where journalists had refused makes an attempt to intervene with their reporting.

For her half, Korte wrote on X: “It’s a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press.”

The president of the National Press Club, Mark Schoeff Jr, described Slavin’s firing as “another brazen attempt by the Pentagon to dictate coverage of the military and should be immediately reversed”.

An common of 1.4 million individuals eat Stars and Stripes’s content material day by day, largely on-line, according to CBS.

The paper is still printed outside the US for members of the army in locations with unreliable web entry.

In October, main US information retailers rejected a new coverage which barred journalists from coming into the constructing unless they only reported data formally authorised by the DoD.

At the time, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the BBC were among the main retailers which said they would not agree to the new guidelines.

The Trump administration argued that the modifications were wanted to shield nationwide safety.

In April 2025, a US decide ordered the administration to restore the Associated Press’s entry to presidential occasions after it was blocked in a dispute over the time period “Gulf of America”.

A few months prior, the White House broke with custom and took management of the press pool which covers the US presidency.