Ladder
Ladder: shutdowns and blocking
A government cuts internet or mobile telephone service, blocks news websites or social media platforms, or jams radio and television signals, so that audiences cannot receive news and reporters cannot send it out.
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.
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
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
After Iran's disputed June 2009 presidential election produced mass protests, the government expelled BBC correspondent Jon Leyne, revoked foreign press credentials, confined most foreign journalists to office-based reporting, and blocked access to numerous websites.
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
Russia's parliament passed a law criminalizing the publication of information about the military that contradicts official statements, with penalties up to 15 years in prison, prompting Novaya Gazeta to pull its Ukraine war coverage and the BBC, CNN and other outlets to suspend operations inside Ru…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
In the two weeks after Venezuela's disputed July 28, 2024 presidential election, Reporters Without Borders documented 70 press-freedom violations, including nine detentions, nine expulsions of foreign correspondents and the suspension of the social media platform X, as President Nicolas Maduro's go…
Sustained · 2 sources · Full entry
4Silence
Removing outlets or channels from the public sphere: closures, licence withdrawals, forced sales, blocking and shutdowns, prior restraint, nationalisation.
Postmaster General Albert Burleson used the wartime Espionage Act to strip the Milwaukee Leader, a socialist daily, of its low-cost second-class mailing rate, cutting off its main channel to readers.
Upheld by a court 7 March 1921 · 2 sources · Full entry
Weeks after the United States entered the First World War, the New York postmaster used the new Espionage Act, a law against interfering with military recruitment, to bar the socialist magazine The Masses from the mail.
Upheld by a court 1 November 1917 · 2 sources · Full entry
Australia's wartime government, under Prime Minister John Curtin, controlled press coverage of military events through the Department of Information.
Reversed 18 April 1944 · 2 sources · Full entry
La Prensa, one of Argentina's leading newspapers and a longtime critic of President Juan Perón's government, was expropriated by the state earlier in 1951.
Sustained 1 October 1951 · 3 sources · Full entry
Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on August 20-21, 1968 to end the Prague Spring, a period of liberalization under Alexander Dubček that had included the lifting of press controls.
Reversed 1 November 1989 · 2 sources · 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
On the day of the September 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende, Chile's armed forces bombed and shut down radio stations that opposed the takeover, arrested journalists and closed newspapers aligned with the ousted government, under the military junta led by Augusto Pi…
Sustained 1 March 1990 · 2 sources · Full entry
On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, cutting phone and telex lines, suspending nearly all newspapers, and interning thousands of people, most Solidarity trade union journalists among them, within days.
Reversed 22 July 1983 · 2 sources · Full entry
Under a state of emergency State President P. W. Botha had declared in July 1985, the government banned television, radio and photographic coverage of unrest in South Africa's Black townships on November 2, 1985, requiring print journalists to report only under police escort.
Reversed 1 June 1990 · 1 source · Full entry
As it revoked Jammu and Kashmir's constitutional autonomy, India's government cut broadband, mobile internet, text messaging and phone service across the region, leaving local journalists unable to file stories, verify information or communicate with sources for months.
Ongoing 5 August 2020 · 2 sources · Full entry
Iran cut internet connectivity to about five percent of normal levels nationwide for nearly a week during protests over fuel prices, while arresting at least eleven journalists, including one detained for reporting on the shutdown itself.
Note: Iran cut internet connectivity to about five percent of normal nationwide for nearly a week and arrested a journalist for reporting on the shutdown itself; no United States action in the record has cut off nationwide communications.
Reversed 23 November 2019 · 2 sources · Full entry
Ethiopia's government cut internet and telephone service across the Tigray region when war broke out there in November 2020, leaving the region without communication for months and forcing reporters to travel there to learn what was happening.
Note: Ethiopia cut internet and phone service to an entire region for months during a civil war, leaving reporters unable to confirm events without traveling there in person; no United States action in the record has cut off a region's communications.
Ongoing 3 May 2021 · 3 sources · Full entry
After seizing power on February 1, 2021, Myanmar's military cut mobile data service nationwide, leaving reporters in rural townships and Rakhine State unable to send news and blocking large areas from outside communication for months.
Note: Myanmar's military cut mobile data nationwide after seizing power, leaving reporters in entire townships unable to file; United States funding and access actions have not shut off a region's communications.
Ongoing 3 May 2021 · 3 sources · Full entry
Belarusian authorities blocked access to Tut.by, the country's most-read independent news site, searched its offices in three cities and arrested at least eleven staff, including its editor-in-chief, citing alleged media-law violations after the site had already lost its official media status.
Sustained · 3 sources · Full entry
Russia's media regulator Roskomnadzor blocked access nationwide to the websites of BBC Russian, Deutsche Welle, Meduza, Voice of America's Russian service and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty within days of invading Ukraine, alongside new prison terms for reporting the regulator called false.
Note: Russia's regulator blocked five foreign outlets and two social media platforms nationwide within days of invading Ukraine, alongside fifteen-year prison terms for coverage it called false; the White House ban excluded three outlets from one building, not from the country.
Sustained 4 March 2022 · 2 sources · Full entry
India blocked independent news outlet Gaon Savera's Facebook page and X account nationwide just before a workers' convention it planned to cover, without a public explanation from the government.
Note: India blocked an independent outlet's Facebook and X accounts nationwide ahead of an event it planned to cover, without a stated reason; the White House ban limited three outlets' building access, not their reach online.
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
Tanzania's government restricted internet and social-media access on October 29, 2025, as citizens voted in a general election marked by protests, cutting national internet traffic by nearly 90 percent and leaving both local and foreign journalists unable to report on the vote and its aftermath in…
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
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