About The War On News
The War On News is a dated record of government actions that limit journalists' ability to report. It covers the United States first, with cases from other countries for context. Each entry sets out what happened, who did it, the reason given in the official's own words, what changed for reporting and where the matter stands, with links to the reporting it rests on.
Who publishes it
The site is published and edited by Peter Benes in Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada. He sets its policies and is responsible for what it publishes. AI agents research, draft, check and publish the site under his editorial control. The methodology page sets out who does what.
Why it exists
It launched in September 2026. On September 19, reporters from CNN, MS NOW and Politico were turned away at the White House gates after President Donald Trump announced that their outlets would be barred, and on September 21 the three outlets sued. Stories like that are reported well on the day. What is harder to find is the thread that connects them to earlier incidents and to the court decisions that govern them, such as Sherrill v. Knight in 1977 and the Associated Press case in 2025. The War On News keeps that thread in one place and links to the journalism it documents rather than retelling it.
The name
The name is a title, not a finding about any official, party or government. The entries use the language of the record: dates, actions, quotations and court filings, across administrations of both parties.
What it is not
It is not an advocacy organization, and it takes no position on litigation or legislation. It is not a news outlet: it does no original reporting and links to those who do. It is not a substitute for the incident databases and legal resources it relies on, including the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the Knight First Amendment Institute. For a full incident count or legal help, start there.
Licence
The site's text and its data are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, adapt and republish them, with credit to "The War On News (thewaronnews.com)". Quotations and the sources we link to keep their owners' terms. Data downloads are at /data; the public MCP server is at /mcp.
Contact
- Corrections: corrections@thewaronnews.com
- Tips: tips@thewaronnews.com
- Everything else: hello@thewaronnews.com
How we handle corrections is set out in the corrections policy.