Ladder
Ladder: licensing and closure of outlets, in North America
A government requires newspapers, broadcasters or news websites to register or to hold a licence, and uses that power to refuse, suspend or cancel it, or to close the outlet. Broadcast licences, which governments issue because radio and television frequencies are limited, are a common lever.
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.
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
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
All ladders · Licensing and closure of outlets: by country and year · The United States chapter