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Britain's Official Press Bureau controls newspaper coverage of the First World War
Weeks after Britain entered the First World War, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith told the House of Commons that the Official Press Bureau was the sole channel through which the Admiralty, the War Office and other departments released naval…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Herbert Henry Asquith · Sustained
Ottoman Empire bars lawmakers and officials from editing newspapers and jails a leading editor
In March 1913 the Ottoman government amended its 1909 press law, barring members of parliament and state officials from serving as newspaper editors and applying the ban retroactively to every periodical already in print. The revision foll…
Licensing and closure of outlets · Stage Silence · Head of government Mehmed V · Sustained
United States: President Theodore Roosevelt seeks criminal libel indictments against the New York World and the Indianapolis News over Panama Canal reporting
President Theodore Roosevelt sought federal criminal libel indictments against the publishers of the New York World and the Indianapolis News after they reported that he and other officials had profited from the United States' purchase of…
Insult and defamation laws · Stage Punish · Head of government Theodore Roosevelt · Reversed
Philippines: United States colonial government's libel law is used to close the newspaper El Renacimiento
The United States colonial government in the Philippines enacted a criminal libel law in 1901 that Governor-General William Howard Taft defended by saying Filipinos were unused to the freedom of the press. The law was used in 1908 to convi…
Insult and defamation laws · Stage Punish · Head of government William Howard Taft · Upheld by a court