WASHINGTON — Pentagon officials have discussed firing the longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes before his scheduled retirement, US officials told CBS News, as the Trump administration strategizes an overhaul of the military news outlet partly funded by American taxpayers.Max D. Lederer announced his retirement on Tuesday effective at the end of September, ending a decades-long career with the newspaper as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon moves to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”Lederer, the second full-time civilian in the position who has served as the publisher of Stars and Stripes for 19 years, wrote in a note to colleagues that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”The announcement comes less than four months after the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job was to safeguard editorial independence. The news outlet is partly funded by the Defense Department, but has a legacy of independence from military and government leadership.“No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence,” Smith wrote in a column.Stars and Stripes has recently been at the forefront of some of the reporting on conditions for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln and concerns for their mental health during the aircraft carrier’s long deployment — concerns that President Donald Trump has downplayed.It’s part of larger, government-driven changes to the military publicationThe Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lederer’s retirement, which comes seven months after the department announced in a social media post that it would essentially overhaul the newspaper to align with its current messaging.Hegseth’s spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote on on X in January that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”More broadly, the developments at Stars and Stripes come against a backdrop of increased efforts by Hegseth to control media coverage of the department.Last year, officials attempted to impose restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon, which, in turn, led most news outlets to turn in their access badges and walk out.This summer, the Pentagon took another step and declared its press office a classified space — instituting a policy that journalists must be accompanied by an escort on Pentagon grounds. That policy is being challenged in court. In mid-July, a panel on the US Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the policy could stand, overturning a lower court decision.In her April column titled “The Pentagon is trying to silence me,” Smith, the former ombudsman, expressed concern over increasing restrictions on the media.“For nearly a year, Pentagon leadership has placed more and more restrictions on the mainstream media,” she wrote. “The New York Times sued and when the Defense/War Department lost in court, instead of following the judge’s ruling Secretary Hegseth and company pivoted, finding another way to restrict journalists.”Of Stars and Stripes, Smith wrote: “This newspaper has a long history of commitment to the military community and to journalistic values. Please don’t let it be controlled by Pentagon brass.”The departing publisher objected to certain changesIn the interview with Stars and Stripes, Lederer said he did not feel the modernization efforts the Pentagon announced in March were appropriate, in particular a transitioning of print products to digital — a move he feared would limit accessibility for troops.“I don’t feel that there’s a full recognition of the value of multiple platforms versus only a digital platform,” Lederer was quoted as saying.In another development, Stars and Stripes said it could not confirm a new deputy had been installed in recent weeks by the Pentagon under Lederer without the publisher’s prior knowledge.Rufus Friday, the chair of Stars and Stripes’ advisory board of publishers, wrote in a letter to congressional leaders about the arrival of the new deputy, a development he said “threatens Stripes’s editorial independence.”Roughly half of Stars and Stripes’ budget comes from the Pentagon, and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.The outlet’s mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”The newspaper has been reporting about the military steadily since World War II, to an audience mainly of service members stationed overseas.Lederer told Stars and Stripes that while his retirement is effective Sept. 30, he does not know whether the Pentagon will keep him as publisher until then or name an acting publisher.
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