Ladder
Ladder: detention and violence, in North America
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
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
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
5Eliminate
Long imprisonment, killing, disappearance or forced exile of journalists, with state involvement as the sources state it.
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 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
All ladders · Detention and violence: by country and year · The United States chapter