Ladder
Ladder: detention and violence
Arrest, detention, prosecution, imprisonment, physical harm or killing of journalists, where police, soldiers, officials or others acting for a government carried out, ordered or authorised the act. Harm by private people is recorded only when a government actor was involved.
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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1Restrict
Limiting access or credentials for particular reporters or outlets: bans from briefings or buildings, pool changes, credential revocations, accreditation refusals.
The U.S. military required reporters covering the 1991 Gulf War to work in escorted "pools" rather than move freely, reviewed pool dispatches before release, and reporters who left the pools were captured or detained.
Sustained 28 February 1991 · 2 sources · Full entry
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 to keep the media's role in a free society in mind when dec…
Reversed 20 July 2021 · 1 source · Full entry
3Punish
Legal or physical action against individual journalists or sources: subpoenas and record seizures, prosecutions, arrests, detention, expulsions, visa denials, assault where a government actor is involved.
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 dollar fine.
Upheld by a court 14 January 1918 · 2 sources · Full entry
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 World War, and was sentenced to ten years in prison on each of…
Upheld by a court 10 March 1919 · 2 sources · Full entry
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 16,000 copies of the Left Wing Manifesto.
Upheld by a court 8 June 1925 · 2 sources · Full entry
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 diplomatic files that news organizations later published.
Reversed 17 January 2017 · 1 source · Full entry
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.
Reversed 29 May 2020 · 2 sources · Full entry
Freelance photojournalist Linda Tirado was struck in the face by a less-lethal round fired by Minneapolis police while covering protests over George Floyd's killing, permanently blinding her in one eye; the city settled her lawsuit for $600,000 in 2022 while continuing to deny an officer had fired…
Sustained 26 May 2022 · 2 sources · Full entry
After federal officers deployed to Portland used tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets on journalists and legal observers covering protests, the American Civil Liberties Union sued, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction barring officers from dispersing, arresting or using force ag…
Reversed 23 July 2020 · 3 sources · Full entry
FBI agents raided Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe's New York home and seized his phones as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden's daughter, which the group had reported on; O'Keefe was never charged.
Unknown · 1 source · Full entry
Police in Marion, Kansas, led by Chief Gideon Cody, raided the Marion County Record's newsroom and publisher Eric Meyer's home, seizing computers, phones and files, on a warrant tied to an identity-theft investigation.
Reversed 5 August 2024 · 3 sources · Full entry
A law enforcement officer shot Nine News Australia correspondent Lauren Tomasi with a rubber bullet while she was reporting live from a Los Angeles protest against federal immigration raids, prompting Australia's prime minister to call the incident unacceptable and raise it with the U.S. government.
Unknown · 1 source · Full entry
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.
Unknown · 4 sources · Full entry
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.
Reversed 29 September 1986 · 6 sources · Full entry
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.
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
British authorities detained David Miranda, partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours at Heathrow Airport under anti-terrorism powers, and separately had Guardian staff destroy hard drives holding files leaked by Edward Snowden rather than hand them to a court.
Upheld by a court 19 January 2016 · 3 sources · Full entry
Months after the military removed President Mohamed Morsi, Egyptian security forces arrested Al Jazeera English journalists Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed at a Cairo hotel; courts later convicted them of aiding a banned organization, and international pressure led to pardons.
Reversed 23 September 2015 · 3 sources · Full entry
Philippine agents arrested Rappler executive editor Maria Ressa at the outlet's Manila office and held her overnight on a cyber libel case tied to a 2012 story, published before the cybercrime law used to charge her existed.
Note: Philippine agents arrested an outlet's executive editor at her own newsroom over a story published years before the cybercrime law used to charge her existed; United States detentions in the record ended without charges filed.
Reversed 14 February 2019 · 3 sources · Full entry
Turkish authorities detained three journalists, jailing columnist Tolga Sardan pending trial, under a 2022 law criminalizing the spread of disinformation, after the government's own disinformation-fighting body disputed their reporting on a leaked intelligence document and a story about released pr…
Ongoing · 2 sources · Full entry
In the two weeks after Venezuela's disputed July 28, 2024 presidential election, Reporters Without Borders documented 70 press-freedom violations, including nine detentions, nine expulsions of foreign correspondents and the suspension of the social media platform X, as President Nicolas Maduro's go…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
The Committee to Protect Journalists found at least four journalists imprisoned under Tunisia's 2022 Decree-Law 54 on cybercrime as of January 2025, including radio hosts Mourad Zghidi and Borhen Bsaies, pushing the country's jailed-journalist count to its highest since 1992 under President Kais Sa…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
On a single day in February 2025, groups of men beat at least eight journalists in two separate incidents in rural Bangladesh while they investigated a medical-negligence tip and a land dispute; the incidents came as the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus drafted new cyber ordinances rights g…
Ongoing · 1 source · Full entry
After the detention of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, on March 19, 2025, protests spread in Türkiye, and between March 19 and March 28, 2025, the authorities detained at least 13 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit organization in New York.
Unknown 2 April 2025 · 1 source · Full entry
Ethiopian authorities arrested at least six journalists between August and September 2025, including three from Sheger FM after the Ethiopian Media Authority ordered the station to delete a broadcast it accused of bias and inciting violence, ahead of national elections scheduled for 2026.
Ongoing 22 September 2025 · 1 source · Full entry
The Committee to Protect Journalists documented at least 28 Serbian journalists reporting being struck, detained, sprayed with chemical irritants or having their equipment destroyed by police between June and September 2025 while covering nationwide anti-government protests; the interior ministry d…
Ongoing · 1 source · Full entry
On February 10, 2026, a court in India sentenced the investigative journalist Ravi Nair to one year in prison and a fine of 5,000 rupees (about US$55) for criminal defamation, an offence under which a statement that damages someone's reputation can lead to a fine or prison sentence.
Unknown 10 February 2026 · 2 sources · Full entry
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
In March 1913 the Ottoman government amended its 1909 press law, barring members of parliament and state officials from serving as newspaper editors and applying the ban retroactively to every periodical already in print.
Sustained 9 March 1913 · 2 sources · Full entry
Canada invoked the War Measures Act at the outset of the Second World War and used it to bring in the Defence of Canada Regulations, which gave the government power to review and restrict hundreds of newspapers and periodicals and to ban dozens of organizations, including the Communist Party of Can…
Sustained 31 December 1945 · 2 sources · Full entry
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.
Reversed 31 July 1991 · 4 sources · Full entry
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 requiring government clearance for whatever remained.
Reversed 25 February 1986 · 2 sources · Full entry
On the day of the September 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende, Chile's armed forces bombed and shut down radio stations that opposed the takeover, arrested journalists and closed newspapers aligned with the ousted government, under the military junta led by Augusto Pi…
Sustained 1 March 1990 · 2 sources · Full entry
On October 19, 1977, a day South Africans came to call Black Wednesday, the government banned the newspapers The World and Weekend World and had the Special Branch police arrest editor Percy Qoboza and deputy editor Aggrey Klaaste.
Sustained 1 March 1978 · 4 sources · Full entry
Under General Chun Doo-hwan's martial-law government, South Korean authorities ordered newsrooms in 1980 to purge journalists who had resisted press controls or joined a May sit-in strike for press freedom, and closed 172 periodicals, dismissing roughly 2,000 journalists in total.
Reversed 1 June 1987 · 2 sources · Full entry
On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, cutting phone and telex lines, suspending nearly all newspapers, and interning thousands of people, most Solidarity trade union journalists among them, within days.
Reversed 22 July 1983 · 2 sources · Full entry
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 seven years in prison, while denying any press controls existe…
Ongoing 1 January 1989 · 2 sources · Full entry
Weeks after seizing power, Myanmar's military junta revoked the operating licenses of five independent media outlets covering protests against the coup and raided two of their newsrooms, seizing computers and files; journalists from the outlets were later arrested and charged under a broadened pena…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
Belarusian authorities blocked access to Tut.by, the country's most-read independent news site, searched its offices in three cities and arrested at least eleven staff, including its editor-in-chief, citing alleged media-law violations after the site had already lost its official media status.
Sustained · 3 sources · Full entry
5Eliminate
Long imprisonment, killing, disappearance or forced exile of journalists, with state involvement as the sources state it.
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.
Reversed 10 December 1983 · 2 sources · Full entry
Under President Jean-Claude Duvalier, Haitian authorities arrested and deported staff of Radio Haiti-Inter, an independent station that had reported critically on the government, forcing its director, journalist Jean Dominique, into exile after security forces raided the station on November 28, 198…
Reversed 1 February 1986 · 3 sources · Full entry
A special military tribunal convicted four Nigerian journalists as accessories to a supposed 1995 coup plot after they reported on it, sentencing them to lengthy prison terms with no right of appeal, under the military government of General Sani Abacha.
Reversed 15 June 1998 · 2 sources · Full entry
Eritrea's government closed every private newspaper and jailed at least nineteen journalists, including Dawit Isaac of the paper Setit, without charge or trial in September 2001, after suspending the constitution.
Note: Eritrea jailed at least nineteen journalists without charge, trial or public acknowledgment of their fate after suspending its constitution, and has not accounted for several of them in over two decades; no United States detention in the record has approached that duration.
Ongoing · 3 sources · Full entry
Anna Politkovskaya, a Novaya Gazeta journalist known for reporting critical of Russia's conduct of the war in Chechnya, was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building; a Moscow court later convicted a former police officer of organizing surveillance for her killers.
Note: Who ordered the killing was never conclusively established in court.
Upheld by a court 9 June 2014 · 3 sources · Full entry
A Baku court convicted investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova on business and tax charges and sentenced her to seven and a half years in prison, in a case CPJ said was payback for her reporting on official corruption.
Note: Azerbaijan imprisoned an investigative reporter for over a year on charges connected to her reporting on the president's family's business holdings; no United States case in the record has produced a multi-year sentence.
Reversed 25 May 2016 · 3 sources · Full entry
A Myanmar court sentenced Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo to seven years under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act after police handed them classified documents at a dinner shortly before their arrest, while they were investigating the killing of Rohingya Muslim villagers.
Note: Both reporters were pardoned in May 2019 after 511 days in prison.
Reversed 7 May 2019 · 2 sources · Full entry
Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was killed by Saudi agents inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul; the CIA concluded the crown prince ordered the killing, which Saudi Arabia denied.
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
China detained citizen journalist Zhang Zhan for posting independent video reports from Wuhan during the early COVID-19 outbreak, later convicting her of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and, after her release, detaining her again years later.
Note: China imprisoned a citizen journalist for four years over her Wuhan reporting, then opened a second case against her after release; United States detention incidents in the record ended in release the same day.
Ongoing · 2 sources · Full entry
Belarus sentenced Polish-Belarusian correspondent Andrzej Poczobut to eight years in prison on charges of inciting hatred and calling for sanctions, after holding him since March 2021.
Note: Belarus sentenced a correspondent to eight years for reporting on its Polish minority and held him nearly five years before an exchange; comparable United States detentions in the record ended in hours, not years.
Reversed 28 April 2026 · 3 sources · Full entry
Russia arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in March 2023 on an espionage charge his employer called fabricated, held him for about 15 months before a closed trial, and sentenced him to 16 years before releasing him in a prisoner exchange.
Note: Russia held a Wall Street Journal reporter for over a year on an espionage charge his employer called fabricated, then sentenced him to sixteen years; United States detentions of journalists in the record have not led to years-long imprisonment on state charges.
Reversed 1 August 2024 · 3 sources · Full entry
A Guatemalan court convicted El Periodico founder Jose Ruben Zamora of money laundering and sentenced him to six years in prison, months after his newspaper, known for investigating government corruption, was forced to close; press-freedom groups said the case was connected to his investigative rep…
Ongoing · 2 sources · Full entry
On December 15, 2025, the High Court of Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China with its own courts, convicted Jimmy Lai, founder of the newspaper Apple Daily, on two counts of "conspiracy to commit collusion with foreign forces" under the National Security Law, which China's central go…
Sustained 8 February 2026 · 5 sources · Full entry
All ladders · Detention and violence: by country and year · The United States chapter