The record
Incidents: access bans, state or province level
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.
All filters: country, dates, head of government, sort
United States (Louisiana): Federal court order blocking enforcement of the police buffer zone law, January 2025
On January 31, 2025, Judge John W. deGravelles of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana, a federal trial court, blocked enforcement of the state's 25-foot (7.6-metre) police buffer zone law with a preliminar…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Jeff Landry · Ongoing
United States (Florida): Halo Law buffer zone around first responders, January 2025
On January 1, 2025, the "Halo Law" took effect in Florida, a state in the south-eastern United States. It creates a 25-foot (7.6-metre) buffer zone around first responders, such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics, while they a…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Ron DeSantis · Sustained
United States (Louisiana): 25-foot buffer zone law around police officers, May 2024
On May 24, 2024, the governor of Louisiana, a state in the southern United States, Jeff Landry, signed a law that makes it a crime to stay within 25 feet (about 7.6 metres) of a working law enforcement officer after the officer has told a…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Jeff Landry · Ongoing
Federal court strikes down Arizona's law banning recording police within 8 feet
Arizona's 2022 law making it a crime to record police within eight feet after a warning was struck down by a federal judge in July 2023, who found it chilled a substantial amount of activity protected by the First Amendment and was not nec…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Doug Ducey · Reversed
Court orders RCMP to stop restricting press access at Fairy Creek logging blockades
A British Columbia court found the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had failed to justify wide exclusion zones that kept journalists away from its enforcement of a logging injunction at the Fairy Creek old-growth blockades, and ordered police…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government John Horgan · Reversed
Minnesota State Patrol arrests CNN crew live on air in Minneapolis
Minnesota State Patrol troopers arrested CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez and his crew on live television while they covered protests after the police killing of George Floyd. Officers gave no reason before handcuffing the three men; Governo…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Tim Walz · Reversed
United States: Texas judge allows televised pretrial hearing in the Billie Sol Estes case; Supreme Court later limits cameras in criminal courtrooms
A Texas state judge in Tyler allowed live television and photography at pretrial hearings and part of the criminal trial of financier Billie Sol Estes, over defense objections. On June 7, 1965, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Price Daniel · Reversed
United States: Tallahatchie County, Mississippi sheriff segregates Black reporters at the Emmett Till murder trial, September 1955
When the murder trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam opened in Sumner, Mississippi, on September 19, 1955, Tallahatchie County Sheriff Clarence Strider assigned Black reporters covering the trial, along with Michigan congressman Charles Digg…
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government Hugh L. White · Sustained
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