Ladder
Ladder: surveillance and subpoenas, in North America
A government collects journalists' communications or records, often to learn who their sources are. Methods include subpoenas (court orders to hand over records or to testify), search warrants, seizure of phones and notes, demands to telephone and internet companies, and spyware placed on reporters' devices.
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.
In 1953, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, a Senate panel led by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, questioned New York Post editor James Wechsler about his membership in the Young Communist League in the 1930s.
Unknown · 3 sources · Full entry
On April 12, 1971, Palo Alto police searched the newsroom of The Stanford Daily, a student newspaper, for photographs of a clash between demonstrators and police at Stanford University Hospital, though no member of the paper's staff was suspected of a crime.
Upheld by a court 31 May 1978 · 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
On September 9, 1971, the office of Charles Colson, special counsel to the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, sent White House Counsel John Dean, the president's lawyer on official matters, a memorandum naming 20 people as an initial "enemies list."
Unknown · 2 sources · Full entry
On April 25, 2025, the Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi, head of the Department of Justice, the federal department that prosecutes federal crimes, rescinded rules adopted in 2021 and 2022 under her predecessor, Merrick Garland, that barred prosecutors from seeking reporters' records…
Sustained 25 April 2025 · 1 source · 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.
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, led by Senator James Eastland, issued 35 subpoenas over past or present Communist Party ties in the press, and 26 of them went to New York Times staff.
Sustained 1 December 1956 · 1 source · Full entry
Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Paul Branzburg was subpoenaed by a Kentucky grand jury, a body that investigates possible crimes, after he wrote about drug users he had observed.
Upheld by a court 29 June 1972 · 1 source · Full entry
A federal judge jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller for contempt after she refused to tell a grand jury who told her the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, part of a special counsel's investigation into the leak.
Upheld by a court 29 September 2005 · 2 sources · Full entry
The U.S. Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records from more than 20 Associated Press phone lines during a leak investigation, notifying the news agency only after the fact; AP called the scope of the seizure unjustified.
Sustained 12 July 2013 · 2 sources · Full entry
A 2010 FBI search-warrant affidavit, unsealed in 2013, described Fox News reporter James Rosen as a possible co-conspirator in violating the Espionage Act because he sought classified information from a State Department analyst, and used that theory to obtain his private emails.
Sustained 12 July 2013 · 2 sources · Full entry
A report by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a non-profit organization in New York that documents cases of journalists imprisoned or killed worldwide, published on October 10, 2013, found that since 2009 the United States Department of Justice had brought felony charges against six gover…
Unknown · 4 sources · Full entry
For years, federal prosecutors sought New York Times reporter James Risen's testimony identifying a confidential source in a CIA leak case; the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal, but Attorney General Eric Holder ultimately chose not to force him to testify or name the source.
Reversed 17 October 2014 · 2 sources · Full entry
After it came to light that the Trump-era Justice Department had secretly obtained the phone and email records of reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a policy barring prosecutors from using subpoenas or other compulsory process again…
Reversed 25 April 2025 · 2 sources · Full entry
FBI agents raided Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe's New York home and seized his phones as part of an investigation into the alleged theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden's daughter, which the group had reported on; O'Keefe was never charged.
Unknown · 1 source · Full entry
Police in Marion, Kansas, led by Chief Gideon Cody, raided the Marion County Record's newsroom and publisher Eric Meyer's home, seizing computers, phones and files, on a warrant tied to an identity-theft investigation.
Reversed 5 August 2024 · 3 sources · Full entry
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal at Washington Dulles Airport, questioned him about his reporting trips to Iran, and seized both of his phones without his consent; the phones were returned a week later after he sued.
Reversed 17 July 2026 · 1 source · Full entry
Citizen Lab, R3D and Article 19 documented Pegasus spyware sent to Mexican investigative journalists Carmen Aristegui and Carlos Loret de Mola through phishing text messages, which the Mexican government denied having sent.
Note: Investigative journalists' phones were secretly infected with spyware through fabricated personal warnings, with government responsibility denied and never conclusively established.
Unknown 20 June 2017 · 2 sources · Full entry
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