Termination notices go to editor Erik Slavin, publisher Max Lederer and reporter Lara Korte.Slavin says the Pentagon fired him over CBS remarks on hypothetical censorship.Paper gets Defense Department funding but has historically been editorially independent. The editor-in-chief of the Stars and Stripes US military newspaper says that he is being fired for insubordination, and Reuters learned that the Pentagon has sent notices to the paper's leadership informing them that they would be let go."According to the notice, I am being fired for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a personal red line," Erik Slavin said in a statement on Friday (local time).In an email to staff seen by Reuters, the newspaper's Europe and Middle East bureau chief, William Gallo, noted that Slavin, along with longtime publisher Max Lederer and another reporter, had received termination notices."We all have questions about what things will look like moving forward... I am still here, and you are still here. And we will continue to do independent journalism, in accordance with our legal mandate," Gallo wrote.Lederer was set to retire at the end of September.In his email this week announcing his retirement, Lederer wrote that the Pentagon had a new vision for the newspaper that differed from his own.Lara Korte, who covered the Middle East for the newspaper, said on social media on Friday that she had been fired.She said it was because she told CBS News that she works for Stars and Stripes, not the Pentagon.The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Stars and Stripes, which has published a newspaper continuously since WWII and provides news to US troops around the world, receives funding from the Defense Department but has historically been editorially independent.Front page of The Stars and Stripes, 22 February 1918.Jacques Boyer / Roger-Viollet / AFPBut the Pentagon, under US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has sought to take greater control over the newspaper.Earlier this year, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said the department would "modernise its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members."The Pentagon recently appointed a military deputy to the publisher for the newspaper.In a post on X on Friday, Parnell quoted from an open letter the military deputy had written."We may never be able to have the same impact for our service members digitally that our paper had during World War II in a vastly different media environment, but I also believe that we can do better - that we must do better for our most important constituency, the men and women who make up the US Armed Forces," the letter said.In his first administration, President Donald Trump reversed a decision by the Pentagon to shut down the newspaper altogether.Press freedom advocates have criticised broader policy changes under the Trump administration that have limited journalists' access to the Pentagon, saying they suppressed freedom of speech.- Reuters