Ladder
Ladder: prior restraint, in Asia
An order or rule that stops something from being published before it appears, rather than penalising it afterwards. Examples are boards that must approve articles, books or films before release, court injunctions against publication, and rules that require officials to review material before it is published.
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
Narrow this ladder
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.
India's Income Tax Department searched BBC offices in Delhi and Mumbai for alleged tax evasion, three weeks after the government used emergency powers to block a BBC documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's response to 2002 communal violence.
Unknown · 1 source · Full entry
Türkiye's broadcast regulator, RTUK, fined three television channels and suspended the next five episodes of two of their programs after they aired criticism of the government's response to the February 2023 earthquakes.
Note: A national regulator barred two programs from airing at all for five future episodes over their earthquake coverage, a forward restriction rather than a single broadcast ban.
Sustained 22 February 2023 · 2 sources · Full entry
India's 2023 amendment to its Information Technology Rules empowered a government-run Fact Check Unit to label online content about the central government 'fake' or 'false' and require its removal; comedian Kunal Kamra and media groups challenged it, and the Bombay High Court struck the rule down a…
Reversed 20 September 2024 · 2 sources · Full entry
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
After Japan's war with China escalated into full scale conflict in July 1937, the government invoked Article 27 of the Newspaper Law to require government clearance before publishing war related news, while a Home Ministry directive to local officials banned the printing of what it called "fallacie…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
When Israel declared independence in 1948 under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, it retained a British Mandate-era Press Ordinance giving the military the power to review and restrict publications on security grounds, later formalized through an Editors' Committee that let most Israeli newspapers s…
Ongoing 1 January 1989 · 1 source · 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
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on June 25, 1975, and the next day her government imposed pre-press controls on every Indian newspaper, requiring official clearance before publication and later forcibly merging the country's news agencies into one.
Reversed 21 March 1977 · 1 source · 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
An Israeli judge ordered Israeli media barred from any mention of a prisoner held under a false identity, or of the order itself, applying a system under which security-related stories must be reviewed and cleared by the military before publication.
Note: A court order barred any domestic mention of a named prisoner's case or of the order itself, backed by a standing system requiring advance approval of security reporting.
Unknown 1 June 2010 · 3 sources · Full entry
All ladders · Prior restraint: by country and year · The United States chapter