Search: prior restraint
The number of entries reflects the depth of this record, not the severity of a country's conduct.
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United States: Department of Defense press credential rules requiring approval before release of information, September 2025
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 o…
Credential control · Stage Restrict · Head of government Donald Trump · Ongoing
Bombay High Court strikes down India's government 'fact check unit' rule
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 cha…
Official labels · Stage Pressure · Head of government Narendra Modi · Reversed
Turkiye: the broadcast regulator fines and suspends channels for earthquake coverage
Turkiye'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.
Prior restraint · Stage Pressure · Head of government Recep Tayyip Erdoğan · Sustained
Indian tax authorities search BBC offices weeks after Modi documentary ban
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 com…
Surveillance and subpoenas · Stage Pressure · Head of government Narendra Modi · Unknown
Political appointees alter CDC coronavirus guidance before public release
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 relea…
Prior restraint · Stage Restrict · Head of government Donald Trump · Unknown
Egypt: a license requirement leaves an independent news site unable to operate legally for years
Egypt's Supreme Council for Media Regulation required news websites to obtain a government license to operate, and independent outlet Al-Manassa's application, filed in 2018, went unanswered for more than two years.
Prior restraint · Stage Pressure · Head of government Abdel Fattah el-Sisi · Ongoing
Israel: a court bars any mention of the 'Prisoner X' case
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 pu…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Benjamin Netanyahu · Unknown
Pentagon sets ground rules for journalists embedded with United States forces in Iraq
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.
Access bans · Stage Restrict · Head of government George W. Bush · Sustained
United Kingdom bars broadcasters from airing Sinn Féin members' own voices
Home Secretary Douglas Hurd directed British broadcasters in October 1988 not to air the voices of representatives of Sinn Féin, a party linked to the Irish Republican Army, and other groups linked to violence in Northern Ireland. Broadcas…
Licensing and closure of outlets · Stage Silence · Head of government Margaret Thatcher · Reversed
Burma's new military government tightens pre-publication press controls after seizing power
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 se…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Saw Maung · Ongoing
Argentina's military junta threatens journalists with prison for reporting on its opponents
Hours after seizing power on March 24, 1976, Argentina's military junta, led by General Jorge Videla, issued Communiqué No. 19, threatening up to 10 years in prison for reporting favorable to groups it called subversive. Hundreds of journa…
Detention and violence · Stage Eliminate · Head of government Jorge Rafael Videla · Reversed
India imposes pre-press controls on every newspaper during the 1975 Emergency
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 t…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Indira Gandhi · Reversed
Philippines President Marcos closes every major news outlet under martial law
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…
Shutdowns and blocking · Stage Silence · Head of government Ferdinand Marcos · Reversed
United States government seeks an injunction to stop The New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers
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. The Supreme Court…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Richard Nixon · Reversed
Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia is followed by the return of government press controls
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. In the invasion's aftermath, the new le…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Alexander Dubček · Reversed
South Africa's Suppression of Communism Act lets the government ban publications and restrict individuals
Under Prime Minister Daniel François Malan, South Africa's parliament approved the Suppression of Communism Act in 1950, defining communism broadly enough to cover most opposition to apartheid. It let the government ban organizations and p…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Daniel François Malan · Reversed
Israel retains a British-era law giving the military the power to review and restrict the press
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 thro…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government David Ben-Gurion · Ongoing
Australia's wartime government seizes a Sydney newspaper edition under press controls rules
Australia's wartime government, under Prime Minister John Curtin, controlled press coverage of military events through the Department of Information. In April 1944, Minister for Information Arthur Calwell ordered the seizure of copies of t…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government John Curtin · Reversed
United States creates an Office of Censorship and a wartime code for the press
Twelve days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship. Its director, Byron Price, a former Associated Press editor, wrote a Code of Wartime Practices asking newspapers and broadcasters…
Prior restraint · Stage Pressure · Head of government Franklin D. Roosevelt · Sustained
Brazil's Vargas government creates a state messaging department with broad press powers
President Getúlio Vargas created the Department of Press and state messaging in 1939 during Brazil's Estado Novo dictatorship, giving the government direct control over what newspapers, radio and film could publish. The department operated…
Licensing and closure of outlets · Stage Silence · Head of government Getúlio Vargas · Reversed
Franco's Spain requires state permission to be a journalist under a wartime Press Law
While Spain's civil war continued, the Nationalist government led by Francisco Franco enacted a Press Law in April 1938 requiring government permission to found a newspaper, work as a journalist or direct a paper, alongside continued pre-p…
Credential control · Stage Silence · Head of government Francisco Franco · Reversed
Portugal's Salazar government formally establishes press controls under a new constitution
Portugal's government, led by Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, had restricted the press since a 1926 military coup while officially denying it did so. In 1933, alongside a new constitution promising freedom of expression, the go…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government António de Oliveira Salazar · Reversed
United States Supreme Court strikes down a Minnesota law used to shut a newspaper
A Hennepin County attorney used Minnesota's 1925 Public Nuisance Law to shut down The Saturday Press, a Minneapolis paper accusing officials of corruption. In 1931 the Supreme Court of the United States struck the law down, ruling that sto…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Theodore Christianson · Reversed
Soviet Russia creates Glavlit, a central office to review all printed material before publication
In 1922, under Vladimir Lenin's government, Soviet Russia created Glavlit, a single agency with final authority to review newspapers, books, plays and even posters before they could be printed or performed. By 1930 no publication in the So…
Prior restraint · Stage Silence · Head of government Vladimir Lenin · Ongoing