The record
Incidents, stage: punish
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.
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United States Justice Department secretly seizes two months of Associated Press phone records
The U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records from more than 20 Associated Press phone lines during a leak investigation, notifying the news agency only after the fact; AP called the scope of the seizure unj…
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Punish · Head of government Barack Obama · Sustained
United States prosecutes former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for identifying a covert colleague to a journalist
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who in 2007 was the first CIA officer to publicly describe the agency's waterboarding of a detainee, pleaded guilty to identifying a covert colleague to a journalist and was sentenced under the Espionage A…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Barack Obama · Upheld by a court
United States charges Army analyst Chelsea Manning under the Espionage Act for leaking to WikiLeaks
The U.S. Army charged intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law against disclosing defense information, after she gave WikiLeaks, a website that publishes leaked documents, a large archive of military and dip…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Barack Obama · Reversed
Iran expels a BBC correspondent and restricts foreign journalists after a disputed 2009 election
After Iran's disputed June 2009 presidential election produced mass protests, the government expelled BBC correspondent Jon Leyne, revoked foreign press credentials, confined most foreign journalists to office-based reporting, and blocked…
Expulsion and visa denial · Stage Punish · Head of government Mahmoud Ahmadinejad · Unknown
New York Times reporter Judith Miller jailed for refusing to name a confidential source in the Valerie Plame affair
A federal judge jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for contempt after she refused to tell a grand jury who told her the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, part of a special counsel's investigation into the leak.
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Punish · Head of government George W. Bush · Upheld by a court
Zimbabwe: the High Court refuses to accredit Daily News journalists under the media registration law
Zimbabwe's High Court ruled that Daily News journalists could not be accredited to work as reporters until their newspaper's publisher had itself been registered with the government's Media and Information Commission.
Credential control · Stage Punish · Head of government Robert Mugabe · Upheld by a court
Serbia's Public Information Act lets courts fine independent newspapers into financial danger
Serbia's parliament passed a Public Information Act allowing courts to levy same-day fines against newspapers for vaguely defined offenses against the state's interests, and independent papers were fined far more often and more heavily tha…
Insult and defamation laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Slobodan Milosevic · Reversed
China expels foreign journalists and restricts coverage of the Tiananmen Square protests
After declaring martial law in Beijing on May 20, 1989, China's government imposed rigid restrictions on coverage of pro-democracy protests and, following the military's June 3-4 clearing of Tiananmen Square, expelled Associated Press corr…
Expulsion and visa denial · Stage Punish · Head of government Li Peng · Sustained
United States Supreme Court rules reporters have no privilege to refuse grand jury subpoenas
Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Paul Branzburg was subpoenaed by a Kentucky grand jury, a body that investigates possible crimes, after he wrote about drug users he had observed. The Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the First Amendment…
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Punish · Head of government Richard Nixon · Upheld by a court
United States Senate panel subpoenas dozens of New York Times journalists over Communist ties
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, led by Senator James Eastland, issued 35 subpoenas over past or present Communist Party ties in the press, and 26 of them went to New York Times staff. The newspaper protested but several employee…
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Punish · Head of government Dwight D. Eisenhower · Sustained
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