Ladder
Ladder: funding and ownership pressure
A government uses money, or its power over owners, instead of acting against reporters directly. Examples are cutting the funds of public broadcasters, forcing the sale of an outlet, steering state advertising away from some publications, and using licence reviews or merger approvals to press an outlet's owners.
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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2Pressure
Using state power short of prosecution to change coverage: regulatory threats, licence reviews, funding cuts, lawsuits by officials, official "fake news" or "foreign agent" labels, advertising pressure, tax audits.
Louisiana taxed the gross receipts that businesses earned from advertising in newspapers with circulations above 20,000 copies a week, a threshold that caught the state's largest papers.
Reversed 10 February 1936 · 2 sources · Full entry
White House Counsel John Dean wrote a memo on how to use federal agencies against President Nixon's political opponents, and the resulting list of more than 200 names included journalists such as CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr.
Reversed 27 June 1973 · 2 sources · Full entry
Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr reopened complaints alleging CBS and NBC distorted the news, demanding CBS turn over the full tape and transcript of a 60 Minutes interview and later accusing NBC's parent Comcast of misleading coverage of an immigration case.
Ongoing · 1 source · Full entry
60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned, saying corporate owner Paramount had begun supervising the program's content in new ways while it faced President Trump's lawsuit over a Harris interview and pursued a sale requiring federal approval; the program publicly said on air that it had lo…
Sustained 22 April 2025 · 1 source · Full entry
On May 1, 2025, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, signed Executive Order 14290, "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media."
Unknown · 3 sources · Full entry
At President Trump's request, Congress passed a rescissions package clawing back roughly $1.1 billion already appropriated to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, eliminating federal funding for NPR, PBS and their member stations.
Sustained 24 July 2025 · 2 sources · Full entry
The Federal Communications Commission approved Paramount's sale to Skydance Media after Skydance agreed to install an ombudsman to review complaints of bias at CBS News for two years and pledged to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs, over the objection of the commission's sole Democratic…
Sustained 24 July 2025 · 1 source · Full entry
On September 17, 2025, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the United States regulator of broadcasting, Brendan Carr, said broadcasters could "do this the easy way or the hard way" over remarks by the television host Jimmy Kimmel, and warned of "additional work for the FCC…
Reversed 23 September 2025 · 2 sources · Full entry
A bipartisan group of former Federal Communications Commission chairs, commissioners and the Radio Television Digital News Association petitioned a federal appeals court to force the FCC to act on a long-pending request to rescind its decades-old 'news distortion' policy after Chair Brendan Carr re…
Ongoing 28 April 2026 · 1 source · Full entry
During the general strike called by the Trades Union Congress in May 1926, the British government requisitioned the country's available newsprint for its own newspaper, the British Gazette, and placed a provisional embargo on paper supplies to the Trades Union Congress's British Worker and many oth…
Ongoing 10 May 1926 · 2 sources · Full entry
In July 1997, the government of President Alberto Fujimori stripped Baruch Ivcher, the Israeli-born owner of Peru's Frecuencia Latina-Canal 2 television station, of his Peruvian citizenship, making him ineligible under Peruvian law to own the station.
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
After Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's government arrested former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim in September 1998, party-linked newspapers pressured staff to follow the official line, police visited journalists who interviewed his wife, and authorities said they would monitor internet traffi…
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
Hungary's parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Viktor Orban's Fidesz party, passed a media law creating a government-appointed National Media and Infocommunications Authority empowered to fine any outlet, print, broadcast or online, for coverage it deemed unbalanced or offensive to public moral…
Sustained 1 January 2011 · 1 source · Full entry
Ecuador's National Assembly passed the Organic Communication Law under President Rafael Correa, creating the Superintendency of Information and Communication (SUPERCOM), a regulator that issued more than 675 sanctions against journalists and media outlets over the following four years.
Reversed 20 February 2019 · 3 sources · Full entry
Weeks after winning power, Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) party passed a law letting the treasury minister directly appoint and dismiss the heads of public radio and television, and dozens of journalists at the public broadcaster were subsequently dismissed or resigned.
Sustained 31 December 2019 · 2 sources · Full entry
Tanzania's government, under President John Magufuli, issued regulations requiring anyone running a blog or website with user content to register with the telecoms regulator and pay an annual fee reported at roughly $930, with vaguely worded content bans.
Unknown 12 April 2018 · 2 sources · Full entry
Index.hu, Hungary's most-read independent news site, fired editor-in-chief Szabolcs Dull weeks after he warned that a change in ownership threatened its independence.
Note: An editor was fired and most of a ninety-person newsroom resigned after a government-linked businessman gained influence over the outlet's ownership; United States funding pressure has not removed an editor through an ownership change.
Sustained 24 July 2020 · 3 sources · Full entry
On December 20, 2023, the president of Hungary, Katalin Novák, promulgated the National Sovereignty Protection Act, passed by the National Assembly, Hungary's parliament, during the government of the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
Reversed 30 June 2026 · 3 sources · Full entry
Georgia's parliament passed a law requiring media and civil-society groups that receive 20 percent or more of their funding from abroad to register as organizations "serving the interests of a foreign power," over mass street protests and international criticism that the label would be used to marg…
Sustained · 1 source · Full entry
Slovakia's parliament, controlled by Prime Minister Robert Fico's coalition, dissolved public broadcaster RTVS and replaced it with a new entity, STVR, whose director is now chosen through a process giving parliament and the culture ministry more direct control, prompting protests and criticism fro…
Sustained 1 July 2024 · 2 sources · Full entry
Between February and April 2026, the government of El Salvador, headed by the president, Nayib Bukele, placed "preventative annotations" on a bank account and real estate belonging to two partners of Trípode S.A. de C.V., the parent company of the investigative news outlet El Faro, according to the…
Sustained 8 May 2026 · 3 sources · Full entry
On August 4, 2026, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, signed a law, adopted unanimously by the Russian parliament on July 24, 2026, that allows the authorities to freeze bank accounts, block property and vehicle sales and deny consular services such as passport renewal to Russians in exile wh…
Sustained 4 August 2026 · 3 sources · 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.
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 than pro-government ones.
Reversed 1 October 2000 · 2 sources · Full entry
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
Beginning on March 15, 2025, the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the United States federal agency that oversees the government's international broadcasters, placed most of its staff on paid administrative leave and moved to shut down the operations of Voice of America (VOA), the United States…
Ongoing 28 March 2025 · 5 sources · Full entry
President Gamal Abdel Nasser's government issued a decree on May 24, 1960 placing every newspaper and magazine in Egypt under state ownership and management, with the government appointing editors and deciding content, ending private control of the country's press.
Ongoing 1 January 1989 · 2 sources · Full entry
On the night of December 13, 1968, Brazil's military government, led by President Artur da Costa e Silva, decreed the Fifth Institutional Act, suspending constitutional guarantees and recessing the national Congress.
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
Gazprom, Russia's state-controlled gas company, used debts owed by NTV's parent company to take control of the country's last major independent television network at a shareholders' meeting, replacing its owner and top editors with its own appointees.
Sustained 14 April 2001 · 1 source · Full entry
An Istanbul court put Türkiye's best-selling newspaper, Zaman, and its parent company under trustees after ruling it supported a group the government called a terrorist organization.
Note: A court replaced a newspaper's board and editors with trustees days after a hearing without the company's lawyers present; United States funding pressure has not removed an outlet's management by court order.
Sustained 4 March 2016 · 3 sources · Full entry
Cambodia's tax authority presented the independent, English-language Cambodia Daily with a $6.3 million bill the paper called arbitrary and undocumented, forcing the 24-year-old newspaper to close rather than pay, amid a wider campaign against independent media before 2018 elections.
Sustained 4 September 2017 · 2 sources · Full entry
Türkiye's largest independent media group, including the newspaper Hurriyet and the broadcaster CNN Turk, was sold to the Demiroren conglomerate, a buyer with ties to the governing party, for a reported 1.1 billion dollars.
Note: Türkiye's largest remaining independent newspaper and broadcast group was sold to a buyer with ties to the president, following two prior purchases that turned pro-government; United States pressure on owners has not produced a forced sale of this kind.
Sustained 21 March 2018 · 2 sources · Full entry
Owners aligned with Hungary's governing party donated 476 outlets into one non-profit foundation, KESMA.
Note: Owners surrendered 476 outlets into one government-aligned foundation, exempted by decree from antitrust review; United States funding pressure has cut money and licenses but has not required owners to give up outlets.
Sustained 29 November 2018 · 3 sources · Full entry
Poland's state-controlled oil company PKN Orlen completed the purchase of Polska Press, a group of 20 regional newspapers reaching millions of readers, from its German owner, over objections from Poland's human rights commissioner.
Note: A state-controlled company bought a group of 20 regional papers reaching 17 million readers; United States funding pressure has cut money and reviewed licenses but has not transferred an outlet's ownership to the state.
Sustained 1 April 2021 · 2 sources · Full entry
President Javier Milei's government fenced off and shut down Telam, Argentina's state-owned news agency, calling it a public-relations operation for the prior Kirchnerist governments; unions and journalist groups called the closure one of the most serious blows to press freedom in decades of Argent…
Sustained · 1 source · Full entry
All ladders · Funding and ownership pressure: by country and year · The United States chapter