Ladder
Ladder: prior restraint, in North America
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.
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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.
Ahead of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon assigned about 600 journalists to travel with United States military units under written ground rules restricting what they could report about troop numbers, operations and casualties.
Sustained 14 April 2003 · 1 source · Full entry
Reporting in 2020 found that political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services rewrote or edited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's public coronavirus guidance and its weekly scientific bulletin before release, bypassing the agency's normal scientific review.
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
On September 19, 2025, the United States Department of Defense, the federal department that provides the country's military forces, issued new credential rules for reporters at the Pentagon, its headquarters building, under the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth.
Ongoing 9 April 2026 · 5 sources · Full entry
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.
Twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship.
Sustained 28 September 1945 · 2 sources · Full entry
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
A Hennepin County attorney used Minnesota's 1925 Public Nuisance Law to shut down The Saturday Press, a Minneapolis paper accusing officials of corruption.
Reversed 1 June 1931 · 1 source · Full entry
The city of Griffin, Georgia, required written permission from the city manager before anyone could distribute pamphlets, circulars or magazines within its limits, treating unlicensed distribution as a punishable nuisance.
Reversed 28 March 1938 · 2 sources · Full entry
After The New York Times began publishing a leaked secret history of the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration obtained a court order stopping further publication, the first such order against a major American newspaper.
Reversed 30 June 1971 · 2 sources · Full entry
On October 27, 1975, Nebraska District Judge Hugh Stuart ordered news organizations covering a mass murder near Sutherland, Nebraska, not to report a suspect's confession or other evidence before jury selection.
Reversed 30 June 1976 · 2 sources · Full entry
In November 1990, the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida ordered Cable News Network to stop broadcasting tape recordings of jailed former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega's telephone conversations with his defense lawyers.
Upheld by a court 18 November 1990 · 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
All ladders · Prior restraint: by country and year · The United States chapter