# Incidents: prior restraint Each incident is a dated action by a government, an official, a regulator, a court or a legislature that limited journalists' ability to gather or publish news. The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct. Filters: country, continent, tactic, stage, from, to, level, actor, leader, outlet, outcome, source_kind, has_case, plus q, sort (date, date_asc, country, tactic, relevance), per_page (up to 100), page and view (table or cards), as query parameters. 24 incidents match this view. - 19 September 2025: [United States: Department of Defense press credential rules requiring approval before release of information, September 2025](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2025-pentagon-issues-new-press-credentialing-rules). On September 19, 2025, the United States Department of Defense, the federal department that provides the country's military forces, issued new credential rules for reporters at the Pentagon, its headquarters building, under the Secretary o… - March 2024: [Bombay High Court strikes down India's government 'fact check unit' rule](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2024-india-court-strikes-down-fact-check-unit). India's 2023 amendment to its Information Technology Rules empowered a government-run Fact Check Unit to label online content about the central government 'fake' or 'false' and require its removal; comedian Kunal Kamra and media groups cha… - 22 February 2023: [Turkiye: the broadcast regulator fines and suspends channels for earthquake coverage](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2023-turkiye-rtuk-fines-earthquake-coverage). Turkiye's broadcast regulator, RTUK, fined three television channels and suspended the next five episodes of two of their programs after they aired criticism of the government's response to the February 2023 earthquakes. - 14 February 2023: [Indian tax authorities search BBC offices weeks after Modi documentary ban](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2023-india-tax-authorities-raid-bbc-offices). India's Income Tax Department searched BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai for alleged tax evasion, three weeks after the government used emergency powers to block a BBC documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to 2002 com… - 12 September 2020: [Political appointees alter CDC coronavirus guidance before public release](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2020-hhs-officials-alter-cdc-covid-guidance-before-publication). Reporting in 2020 found that political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services rewrote or edited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's public coronavirus guidance and its weekly scientific bulletin before relea… - October 2018: [Egypt: a license requirement leaves an independent news site unable to operate legally for years](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2018-egypt-scmr-license-requirement-al-manassa). Egypt's Supreme Council for Media Regulation required news websites to obtain a government license to operate, and independent outlet Al-Manassa's application, filed in 2018, went unanswered for more than two years. - June 2010: [Israel: a court bars any mention of the 'Prisoner X' case](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2010-israel-prisoner-x-gag-order). An Israeli judge ordered Israeli media barred from any mention of a prisoner held under a false identity, or of the order itself, applying a system under which security-related stories must be reviewed and cleared by the military before pu… - 10 February 2003: [Pentagon sets ground rules for journalists embedded with United States forces in Iraq](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/2003-us-pentagon-embedding-rules-iraq). Ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon assigned about 600 journalists to travel with United States military units under written ground rules restricting what they could report about troop numbers, operations and casualties. - October 1988: [United Kingdom bars broadcasters from airing Sinn Féin members' own voices](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1988-uk-broadcasting-ban-sinn-fein). Home Secretary Douglas Hurd directed British broadcasters in October 1988 not to air the voices of representatives of Sinn Féin, a party linked to the Irish Republican Army, and other groups linked to violence in Northern Ireland. Broadcas… - 18 September 1988: [Burma's new military government tightens pre-publication press controls after seizing power](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1988-burma-slorc-press-scrutiny). After crushing the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, Burma's new military government, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, tightened an existing pre-publication press controls board and raised penalties for unauthorized publishing to se… - 24 March 1976: [Argentina's military junta threatens journalists with prison for reporting on its opponents](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1976-argentina-junta-press-decrees). Hours after seizing power on March 24, 1976, Argentina's military junta, led by General Jorge Videla, issued Communiqué No. 19, threatening up to 10 years in prison for reporting favorable to groups it called subversive. Hundreds of journa… - 26 June 1975: [India imposes pre-press controls on every newspaper during the 1975 Emergency](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1975-india-emergency-press-censorship). Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on June 25, 1975, and the next day her government imposed pre-press controls on every Indian newspaper, requiring official clearance before publication and later forcibly merging t… - 21 September 1972: [Philippines President Marcos closes every major news outlet under martial law](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1972-philippines-marcos-martial-law-media-closures). President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law on September 21, 1972, and the next day ordered the military to take over nearly every newspaper, radio and television station in the Philippines, jailing prominent publishers and editors and… - 15 June 1971: [United States government seeks an injunction to stop The New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1971-us-pentagon-papers-injunction). After The New York Times began publishing a leaked secret history of the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration obtained a court order stopping further publication, the first such order against a major American newspaper. The Supreme Court… - 21 August 1968: [Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia is followed by the return of government press controls](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1968-czechoslovakia-normalization-censorship). Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on August 20-21, 1968 to end the Prague Spring, a period of liberalization under Alexander Dubček that had included the lifting of press controls. In the invasion's aftermath, the new le… - 17 July 1950: [South Africa's Suppression of Communism Act lets the government ban publications and restrict individuals](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1950-south-africa-suppression-of-communism-act). Under Prime Minister Daniel François Malan, South Africa's parliament approved the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950, defining communism broadly enough to cover most opposition to apartheid. It let the government ban organizations and p… - 1948: [Israel retains a British-era law giving the military the power to review and restrict the press](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1948-israel-military-censorship-established). When Israel declared independence in 1948 under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, it retained a British Mandate-era Press Ordinance giving the military the power to review and restrict publications on security grounds, later formalized thro… - 16 April 1944: [Australia's wartime government seizes a Sydney newspaper edition under press controls rules](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1944-australia-calwell-newspaper-seizure). Australia's wartime government, under Prime Minister John Curtin, controlled press coverage of military events through the Department of Information. In April 1944, Minister for Information Arthur Calwell ordered the seizure of copies of t… - 19 December 1941: [United States creates an Office of Censorship and a wartime code for the press](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1941-us-office-of-censorship-wartime-press-code). Twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship. Its director, Byron Price, a former Associated Press editor, wrote a Code of Wartime Practices asking newspapers and broadcasters… - 1939: [Brazil's Vargas government creates a state messaging department with broad press powers](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1939-brazil-vargas-creates-dip). President Getúlio Vargas created the Department of Press and state messaging in 1939 during Brazil's Estado Novo dictatorship, giving the government direct control over what newspapers, radio and film could publish. The department operated… - April 1938: [Franco's Spain requires state permission to be a journalist under a wartime Press Law](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1938-spain-franco-press-law). While Spain's civil war continued, the Nationalist government led by Francisco Franco enacted a Press Law in April 1938 requiring government permission to found a newspaper, work as a journalist or direct a paper, alongside continued pre-p… - 1933: [Portugal's Salazar government formally establishes press controls under a new constitution](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1933-portugal-salazar-formal-censorship). Portugal's government, led by Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, had restricted the press since a 1926 military coup while officially denying it did so. In 1933, alongside a new constitution promising freedom of expression, the go… - 1927: [United States Supreme Court strikes down a Minnesota law used to shut a newspaper](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1931-us-near-v-minnesota-gag-law). A Hennepin County attorney used Minnesota's 1925 Public Nuisance Law to shut down The Saturday Press, a Minneapolis paper accusing officials of corruption. In 1931 the Supreme Court of the United States struck the law down, ruling that sto… - 1922: [Soviet Russia creates Glavlit, a central office to review all printed material before publication](https://thewaronnews.com/incidents/1922-ussr-glavlit-censorship). In 1922, under Vladimir Lenin's government, Soviet Russia created Glavlit, a single agency with final authority to review newspapers, books, plays and even posters before they could be printed or performed. By 1930 no publication in the So… Download this view. CSV, JSON or Markdown. 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