Fired Stars and Stripes reporter says paper’s editorial independence “has to be instituted in practice”

Washington — Lara Korte, one of three editorial employees of the military newspaper Stars and Stripes who were dismissed last week after speaking to CBS News, said Monday that the paper’s editorial independence remains paramount. 

“I’ve certainly been bolstered to see comments from the Stripes’ leadership and from the Pentagon that the Stripes is editorially independent,” Korte said. “Obviously that’s something that has to be instituted in practice, and I think that’s something we’re going to get an answer on in the coming weeks and months.” 

The Pentagon on Friday moved to fire Stars and Stripes’ Publisher Max Lederer, Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and Korte, a reporter who covered the Middle East. The cause cited was insubordination. Slavin and Korte said the alleged insubordination was related to interviews they gave to CBS News for a piece on “CBS Sunday Morning” that aired in July.

Korte said Monday that she had spoken to her superiors about the interview and had spoken to other news organizations in the past. “It’s not unusual for us to speak to other outlets. This is something that’s normal and my editors were aware that I was doing it,” Korte said. 

In the “Sunday Morning” story, Korte said that she worked for Stars and Stripes, “not for the Pentagon, not for any administration, not for any policymaker. I’m here to cover the military community.”

When Slavin was asked in that piece if he had any red lines that he would not cross, he said, “‘Don’t run a perfectly accurate story, run this instead. Here it is, written by the Pentagon.’ That would be a red line.”

Korte said Monday that she had not been pressured to stop her reporting or publish anything specific. “As far as I understood, our policy of editorial independence was standing very strong,” she said.

Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell has said the department is moving to modernize the military newspaper and “refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

Stars and Stripes has been a source of critical information for members of the military and their families for decades, and has prided itself on editorial independence. 

Roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ $29 million annual budget comes from taxpayers, a person familiar with the newspaper’s operations said. Readership has declined since its peaks during the Vietnam War, the Cold War and World War II, according to two U.S. officials, but an average of 1.4 million people see Stars and Stripes each day. Print editions overseas also reach service members in remote locations where internet access is spotty and unreliable. 

Korte said Monday that “we don’t write a story unless it has something to do with the military.” She noted that recent memos indicated that the Pentagon was hoping to stop Stars and Stripes from syndicating articles from The Associated Press and The Washington Post, which she said were “of value to our readers.”

“We have readers who are out in austere locations, they can’t access websites, they can’t access the internet, and so keeping them informed about what’s really going on in the world, even when it’s not necessarily something we’re directly writing, is also really important,” she said.