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.
All filters: country, dates, head of government, sort
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
Belarus jails journalist Pavel Sheremet over his reporting for Russian television station ORT
In 1997, Belarusian authorities under President Alexander Lukashenko jailed journalist Pavel Sheremet for three months in connection with his reporting for the Russian television station ORT. The Committee to Protect Journalists said the s…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Alexander Lukashenko · Sustained
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
Soviet Union: arrest and seven-week detention of American correspondent Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow, 1986
Soviet authorities arrested Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, on August 30, 1986, days after the United States arrested a Soviet United Nations employee on espionage charges. Daniloff was held for tw…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Mikhail Gorbachev · Reversed
United States: Espionage Act conviction of Samuel Loring Morison for leaking satellite photographs to Jane's Defence Weekly, 1985 to 1988
Naval intelligence analyst Samuel Loring Morison was convicted under the Espionage Act after he sent classified satellite photographs to a British defense publication in 1984. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit uphel…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Ronald Reagan · Upheld by a court
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
West Germany: police raid Der Spiegel's offices and arrest its editors over a defense article
On October 26, 1962, West German police raided the offices of the news magazine Der Spiegel and arrested its publisher, Rudolf Augstein, after it reported that the armed forces were only "conditionally prepared" for a nuclear strike. Deput…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Konrad Adenauer · Unknown
United States: Montgomery, Alabama commissioner sues The New York Times for libel over a civil rights advertisement
L. B. Sullivan, an elected Montgomery, Alabama city commissioner who supervised the police department, sued The New York Times for libel over a 1960 civil rights advertisement and won a $500,000 jury verdict. On March 9, 1964, the Supreme…
Lawsuits against the press · Stage Punish · Head of government John Patterson · Reversed
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
United States: Supreme Court upholds Benjamin Gitlow's conviction under New York's Criminal Anarchy Law, 1925
The United States Supreme Court voted seven to two on June 8, 1925 to uphold the conviction of socialist publisher Benjamin Gitlow, who had been tried and sentenced to prison under New York's 1902 Criminal Anarchy Law for distributing 16,0…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Alfred E. Smith · Upheld by a court
United States convicts newspaper editor Jacob Frohwerk under the Espionage Act, June 1918
Jacob Frohwerk, an associate editor of the German language newspaper the Missouri Staats-Zeitung, was tried and convicted in June 1918 under the Espionage Act of 1917 for publishing articles opposing American participation in the First Wor…
Secrets and espionage laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Woodrow Wilson · Upheld by a court
United States convicts Mother Earth editor Emma Goldman of draft conspiracy and bars her magazine from the mail
Emma Goldman, editor of the anarchist magazine Mother Earth, was convicted with fellow anarchist Alexander Berkman of conspiring against the newly enacted Selective Draft Law and received the maximum two year sentence and a ten thousand do…
Detention and violence · Stage Punish · Head of government Woodrow Wilson · Upheld by a court
United States: President Theodore Roosevelt seeks criminal libel indictments against the New York World and the Indianapolis News over Panama Canal reporting
President Theodore Roosevelt sought federal criminal libel indictments against the publishers of the New York World and the Indianapolis News after they reported that he and other officials had profited from the United States' purchase of…
Insult and defamation laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Theodore Roosevelt · Reversed
Philippines: United States colonial government's libel law is used to close the newspaper El Renacimiento
The United States colonial government in the Philippines enacted a criminal libel law in 1901 that Governor-General William Howard Taft defended by saying Filipinos were unused to the freedom of the press. The law was used in 1908 to convi…
Insult and defamation laws · Stage Punish · Head of government William Howard Taft · Upheld by a court
Incidents (RSS)Incidents (Atom)Incidents (JSON Feed)All incidents (CSV)