Government attacks on journalists have occurred in the United States throughout its history. Although freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment, federal, state, and municipal actors have in many cases led, participated in, and encouraged attacks against journalists.
Some forms of attacks on journalists have included police assault leading to injury or death using weapons such as batons, pepper spray, rubber bullets, or tear gas; police kettling and mass arrests of journalists; the prosecution of journalists for sedition or treason after reporting (especially anti-war reporting) that construes the U.S. federal government in a negative way; the seizing or destruction of media property and resources using state militias and government-led paramilitaries and mobs; the arrest of student journalists due to on-the-ground reporting at contentious scenes; and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raids of journalist homes to seize information leaked by whistleblowers.
According to many journalist advocacy groups and academics, Donald Trump's actions have contributed to a significant decline in freedom of the press. During his second presidency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents repeatedly assaulted and arrested journalists. Reporters Without Borders claimed "after a century of gradual expansion of press rights in the United States, the country is experiencing its first significant and prolonged decline in press freedom in modern history, and Donald Trump's return to the presidency is greatly exacerbating the situation."
The Sedition Act was enforced primarily against editors and publishers aligned with the Democratic-Republicans who criticized the Federalist administration of President John Adams. Notable cases included Representative Matthew Lyon (convicted and re-elected while jailed), pamphleteer James Thomson Callender of the Richmond Examiner (fined and imprisoned), and Benjamin Franklin Bache, editor of the Philadelphia Aurora (arrested; died of yellow fever before trial). Federalist judges such as Samuel Chase enforced the law vigorously; contemporaries and many historians have viewed the prosecutions as a partisan effort to suppress opposition newspapers and chill political speech.
Scholars identify roughly 17 indictments and 10 convictions under the Act, almost all involving Democratic-Republican printers or speakers. The statute was drafted to sunset on March 3, 1801; after taking office, President Thomas Jefferson issued pardons and remitted fines. The episode is widely remembered as an early and significant violation of freedom of the press.
In 1835, during the period leading up to the Trail of Tears, the Georgia Guard â a state militia unit organized to police Cherokee territory claimed by Georgia â seized the printing press of the Cherokee Phoenix, the first newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States. The newspaper had been established in 1828 at New Echota, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, and was published in both English and the Cherokee syllabary.
The seizure occurred amid escalating tensions between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation over sovereignty and removal in the wake of the Indian Removal Act. Contemporary and scholarly accounts note that the Guard confiscated the press to prevent anti-removal views from being published, effectively halting the paper's revival efforts in 1835; the paper had already ceased in May 1834 when a federal annuity payment failed. The controversy over removal culminated the same year in the signing of the Treaty of New Echota (December 29, 1835), which became the federal basis for removal despite broad Cherokee opposition.
Exhibitions and scholarship have characterized the 1835 confiscation as an instance of state-sponsored censorship of an Indigenous-run press. The Cherokee Phoenix would not resume as a Cherokee Nation publication until its 20th-century revival; the separate Cherokee Advocate began publication in 1844 in Tahlequah.
In the early months of the American Civil War, Union military authorities arrested a number of newspaper editors and publishers for perceived disloyalty or interference with the war effort, and in many cases shut down their presses.
One widely noted case occurred in September 1861, when Frank Key Howard, editor of Baltimore's Daily Exchange, was arrested by Union authorities and confined as a political prisoner. Howard's paper had published strongly anti-administration editorials and was implicated by federal officials in efforts to stir secessionist sentiment in Maryland; he was first imprisoned at Fort McHenry and later transferred to other military prisons.
Federal forces likewise acted against newspapers in several border states. In St. Louis, on July 12, 1861, Colonel Chester Harding â acting under orders from Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon â suppressed the Daily Missouri State Journal and arrested its editor, Joseph W. Tucker, on a treason charge. In Baltimore, multiple papersâÂÂincluding the South and the Daily ExchangeâÂÂwere suspended or forced to cease publication following the arrest of their editors.
Contemporary observers and later scholars have described these actions as wartime press suppressions justified by Union officials on grounds of military necessity and national security.
On May 18, 1864, after the New York World and Journal of Commerce printed a forged presidential proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln ordered Major General John Adams Dix to arrest the editors, proprietors, and publishers of the two papers and "take possession by military force" of their printing establishments in New York City, halting further publication until further orders. The spurious proclamationâÂÂcirculated in the guise of an Associated Press dispatchâÂÂnamed a national day of fasting and prayer and called for an additional draft of 400,000 men.
Dix promptly executed the order: troops occupied the newspaper offices and suspended publication. Within two days, after authorities determined the document was a hoax, the administration rescinded the arrests and allowed the papers to resume; publication restarted by May 23, 1864. Investigators soon arrested the forgersâÂÂjournalists Joe Howard Jr. and Francis A. Mallison; Howard was imprisoned at Fort Lafayette until August 23, 1864.
The episode provoked sharp debate over wartime press powers. Critics â including Democratic editors and some Republicans â condemned the seizures and arrests as censorship and an overreach beyond civil authority, while administration officials defended them as a temporary military necessity to counter a destabilizing fraud.
On November 10, 1898, white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, set fire to the offices of the African AmericanâÂÂowned Wilmington Daily Record, destroying its press in the opening act of the city's coup d'état. State authorities under Gov. Daniel Lindsay Russell then activated the local militia: the Wilmington Light Infantry and a naval militia detachment patrolled the streets with a rapid-fire gun as the violence unfolded, providing cover to the mob during the violence.
Under this show of state power, the Daily Record remained suppressed; editor Alexander Manly fled, and armed forces helped "restore order" on terms set by the coup leadersâÂÂactions described then and since as the use of public force to silence an oppositional Black press. Later public-history accounts characterize the paper's destruction as a turning point that enabled the overthrow of the elected, biracial city government.
Under Governor Peabody's martial law regime, state forces targeted pro-union newspapers in the strike zone. After the Victor Daily Record erroneously reported that a Guardsman was an ex-convict, Guard officers jailed the editor and printers before a retraction could run; with the staff held in the military "bullpen", linotype operator Emma F. Langdon barricaded herself in the office and printed the next day's edition on a Linotype. Guard commanders subsequently imposed prior restraint on the paper, prohibiting coverage favorable to the WFM; amid near-daily arrests, even the Cripple Creek Times cautioned readers not to comment on the strike.
Following the June 1904 Independence depot explosion and a purge of local officials, mixed posses of Guardsmen, deputies, and Citizens' Alliance members shut union presses outright: the Record office and machinery were wrecked, staff were repeatedly arrested, and the governor publicly offered state funds to cover the damageâÂÂafter which the paper reappeared with an anti-union line. These actions formed part of a broader suspension of civil libertiesâÂÂincluding freedom of the pressâÂÂunder state military rule.
During World War I, federal officials used the Espionage Act of 1917 and postal laws to curb antiwar and radical newspapers. The Post Office Department, led by Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, denied or revoked mailing privileges for periodicals deemed seditious, a tactic that functioned as prior restraint by cutting off distribution. In litigation over the socialist daily Milwaukee Leader, the Supreme Court upheld the government's power to revoke second-class mailing privileges, sustaining Burleson's order against the paper. Earlier, the government had barred issues of The Masses from the mails; although a federal district judge briefly enjoined the ban, the Second Circuit dissolved the injunction, allowing postal censorship to continue during the war.
Prosecutors also pursued criminal cases against editors and publishers under the Act for articles and editorials that criticized the war or conscription. In Frohwerk v. United States, the Supreme Court affirmed the conviction of a newspaper writer whose series of articles was found to interfere with military recruitment. In Schaefer v. United States, the Court sustained, in significant part, convictions of German-language newspaper editors based on wartime coverage and commentary.
These measures â postal bans, loss of mailing status, and Espionage Act prosecutions â disrupted newsroom operations, suppressed circulation, and chilled coverage at socialist, labor, and foreign-language outlets. Contemporary civil-liberties commentators and later scholars have characterized the campaign as a major incursion on freedom of the press during wartime, achieved through a combination of criminal charges and administrative censorship rather than overt press licensing.
Enforcement of the Sedition Act of 1918 â which expanded the Espionage Act of 1917 â fell heavily on editors and reporters at antiwar and socialist outlets, using criminal prosecutions carrying five- to twenty-year penalties and postal bans to curtail coverage deemed disloyal.
Courts sustained several prosecutions of working press. In Frohwerk v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Jacob Frohwerk, editor of the German-language Missouri Staats-Zeitung, for antiwar editorials. Victor L. Berger â editor of the Milwaukee Leader and a Socialist member-elect of Congress â was convicted in 1919 alongside journalist codefendants; the Court later reversed due to judicial bias in Berger v. United States (1921). Separately, postal sanctions crippled Berger's paper: the Post Office's revocation of the Leaders second-class mailing privileges was upheld in United States ex rel. Milwaukee Social Democratic Publishing Co. v. Burleson (1921).
Other newsroom cases showed both the reach and limits of wartime repression. Editors and contributors to The Masses â including Max Eastman, Floyd Dell, Art Young, and John Reed â were twice tried in 1918 on charges that their writings obstructed the draft; both trials ended in hung juries and the government dropped the cases. Journalist Rose Pastor Stokes â formerly of the Jewish Daily News â was convicted in 1918 and sentenced to ten years for antiwar remarks, but her conviction was later reversed on appeal and the case ultimately dismissed.
During the Palmer Raids, federal agents repeatedly swept through radical newspapers' editorial rooms and affiliated cultural centers, seizing presses, type, and large quantities of printed matter. Affidavits compiled by the nascent American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) described raids in New York in which Bureau of Investigation officers smashed furniture and typewriters, tore manuscripts, and carted away "boxes of books and papers," including membership lists and editorial files from the Russian-language daily Novy Mir and the Russian People's House where writers and printers worked.
Editors, writers, and printers were arrested under sweeping immigration warrants; some were deported. Among the most prominent were anarchist editors Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, who were removed to Russia in December 1919 during Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's crackdown. The ACLU's dossier also documented the secret confinement of Italian anarchist printers Andrea Salsedo and Roberto Elia in BOI custody in New York; Salsedo died after falling from a Bureau window, and the organization catalogued the case as emblematic of unlawful detention and coercion used against the radical press and its workers.
Contemporaries in the legal community argued that the raids amounted to unconstitutional prior restraint and intimidation of the press. The ACLU's 1920 report assembled hundreds of sworn statements on warrantless searches of newsrooms, seizure of printing equipment, and denial of counsel to editors and staff, and Harvard scholar Zechariah Chafee Jr.'s Freedom of Speech criticized the campaign's suppression of radical journalism. Judges later condemned aspects of the Justice Department's methods and ordered releases in deportation cases, underscoring how the anti-radical dragnet chilled radical periodicals and those who produced them.
In 1963 journalists covering the Birmingham campaign reported widespread physical interference and violence as they documented police deployment of dogs and high-pressure water hoses under Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor. Reporters and photojournalists described being shoved or struck by officers and segregationist bystanders, obstructed from filming, and subjected to equipment seizures and film confiscation â patterns consistent with broader civil-rights-era suppression of newsgathering and the hostile climate facing the press.
Photojournalists on assignment also reported detentions and arrests while covering confrontations in Birmingham, underscoring the risks to press freedom and source protection. Despite local resistance to publishing images of official violence, national and international circulation of photographs from Birmingham â now held in museum collections â both exposed the brutality and highlighted the hazards faced by the press.
During Freedom Summer, national and local reporters who documented voter-registration drives and segregationist violence faced beatings, threats, and custodial arrests by local law enforcement â often on pretexts such as minor traffic violations or "interference." Police and deputies in locales including Neshoba County, McComb, and Philadelphia detained news crews, shadowed them on back roads, and used jailings and fines to disrupt coverage.
Journalists also reported seizures and destruction of cameras, exposed or confiscated film, and forced ejections from public spaces, courthouses, and crime scenes â tactics that curtailed documentation of attacks on civil-rights workers and voters. Editors and stringers for Northern outlets and foreign-language papers were singled out as "outside agitators," and some reporters were roughed up by mobs while officers looked on or arrived only after assaults had ended.
On March 7, 1965 â Bloody Sunday â Alabama state troopers and possemen charged marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Reporters and photographers covering the event described being swept into the melee as troopers swung clubs and deployed gas; news crews documented officers striking people and shoving bystanders, and some equipment was damaged amid the charge.
Weeks earlier, during the February 18, 1965, night march in nearby Marion, lawmen and white mobs directly attacked working press: reporters were beaten and "cameras were smashed," leaving "no photographic record of the night." Among those injured was NBC News correspondent Richard Valeriani, who was clubbed in the head with an ax handle and hospitalized while covering the Marion violence.
Journalists who continued reporting in Selma and surrounding towns recounted ongoing hostility â rough treatment during dispersals and interference with news-gathering â raising contemporaneous press-freedom concerns about officer tactics toward clearly identified media.
During the week of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, a presidentially appointed national commission's Walker Report characterized events as a "police riot", with violence extending to reporters covering both the street clashes and the proceedings inside the hall. Contemporary and retrospective accounts describe journalists being clubbed or shoved, credentials torn, and equipment smashed amid indiscriminate use of batons, mace, and tear gas around Grant Park and the Conrad Hilton; news crews and photographers were among those beaten and gassed as police pushed crowds off Michigan Avenue.
Network coverage and later histories noted that violence captured on camera included attacks on reporters and photographers as well as demonstrators, with mace and tear gas drifting into the Hilton under television lights for minutes at a time while police clubbed people in front of the hotel. The episode became emblematic of clashes between officials and media at mass demonstrations and helped shape debates over press treatment and public-order tactics in the decades that followed.
Rubén Salazar â a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and news director of KMEX-TV â was killed on August 29, 1970, when a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, Tom Wilson, fired a tear gas projectile into the doorway of the Silver Dollar Café in East Los Angeles during the National Chicano Moratorium March; the round struck Salazar in the head, killing him instantly. A 1971 county coroner's inquest found the death to be a homicide, but the district attorney declined to file charges; later reviews of Sheriff's Department files concluded there was no evidence Wilson intentionally targeted Salazar.
During the 1999 Seattle WTO protests, police used aggressive public-order tactics â including tear gas, pepper spray, curfews, and an emergency "no-protest zone" â that swept up working reporters alongside demonstrators and hampered news coverage in downtown Seattle. Contemporary accounts describe journalists being driven back by chemical agents, shoved with batons during street clearances, and detained in mass arrest operations even while identifying themselves as press, with several newsrooms later reporting damaged or confiscated equipment amid the chaos.
Subsequent litigation and reviews underscored how those tactics affected newsgathering. A federal jury later found that police lacked probable cause for a major sweep of downtown arrestees â a group that included observers and working media â awarding damages to plaintiffs who were taken into custody during WTO week; other civil cases and settlements followed. At the same time, appellate rulings upholding portions of the downtown security zone highlighted how access restrictions and rolling dispersal orders constrained where reporters could safely stand to observe and document events.
Following the September 11 attacks, journalists covering protests, national security, and government operations increasingly reported arrests and detentions, equipment seizures, restricted access, and expanded surveillance by law enforcement and security agencies. Press-freedom organizations described a post-9/11 climate in which leak investigations and electronic monitoring deterred sources and chilled reporting, coinciding with a measurable decline in U.S. press-freedom indicators by the mid-2010s.
Analysts attribute these trends to a combination of factors: post-9/11 expansions of secrecy and surveillance under laws and policies related to the USA PATRIOT Act, FISA, and related programs; growth of domestic intelligence sharing and protest monitoring through DHS-funded fusion centers; increasing militarization of policing (e.g., the 1033 program); and the institutionalization of border searches of electronic devices that raised concerns about source confidentiality and unpublished materials.
By 2015, Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States 49th in its World Press Freedom Index, and a joint Human Rights Watch/ACLU study concluded that large-scale U.S. surveillance measurably impeded newsgathering by making sources less willing to communicate with reporters.
The Miami model â deployed during the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meetings in Miami in November 2003 â featured heavily militarized protest policing, including large interagency deployments, strict perimeters, selective credentialing (with some reporters embedded in police units), and widespread use of less-lethal munitions. Press-freedom groups and observers reported that clearly identified journalists were struck during line pushes and crowd dispersals, hit by rubber bullets and pepper spray, and exposed to concussion/flash-bang devices while covering events near police lines; arrests and detentions also swept in reporters and legal observers, alongside equipment seizures and interference with newsgathering. Subsequent reviews criticized the tactics: a Miami-Dade citizens panel condemned rights violations surrounding the FTAA operation, while civil-liberties groups documented the sidelining of press credentials and the treatment of non-embedded journalists as ordinary demonstrators.
These practices were later cited in litigation and oversight as emblematic of a model that chilled protest coverage and compromised press freedom by normalizing force against working reporters, mass detention near cordons, and post-event legal exposure. Lawsuits and settlements following the FTAA operation documented alleged interference with newsgathering and sought policy reforms, while contemporaneous reporting described photographers and camera crews caught in munitions fire during dispersals.
During protests around the 2004 RNC in New York City, police detained multiple members of the press, including Newsday photographer Moises Saman, who was grabbed from behind, thrown to the ground, and held for roughly two hours before release. At least six journalists were arrested or detained while covering the convention and related street demonstrations, among them AP photo aides Jeannette Warner and Tim Kulick (Warner was held about 12 hours at Pier 57), Narco News reporter Jennifer Whitney, "Democracy Now!" reporter Daniel Cashin, and a freelance Reuters camerawoman, Eartha Melzer. In a separate incident, WRDR radio journalist Daniel JonesâÂÂcredentialed by both the convention and the NYPDâÂÂwas detained more than three hours by police and the Secret Service and had his credentials confiscated.
Beyond the arrests, civil-liberties reviews documented physical handling, mass "sweep" arrests, and harsh detention conditions affecting those documenting police actions. The NYCLU's post-RNC report cited misuse of plastic handcuffs, prolonged detention, and unsafe conditions at Pier 57 (the temporary processing facility), along with "aggressive actions directed at people documenting police actions," which included journalists and legal observers. Contemporary press freedom coverage likewise noted that 1,784 people were arrested overall during the convention week, including an unknown number of journalists, credentialed and noncredentialed.
Police in St. Paul, Minnesota arrested or detained dozens of journalists while they were covering protests around the 2008 RNC; those cited included Associated Press reporters Amy Forliti and John Krawczynski, student journalists, local photographers, and independent media crews. In one "kettle" on the Marion Street bridge, reporters were penned in and issued "unlawful assembly" citations alongside demonstrators; authorities later said credentialed press would be cited rather than jailed, and most were released the same day.
Physical force against credentialed reporters was documented. Democracy Now! producer Nicole Salazar was thrown to the ground, pinned with a boot on her back, and arrested while repeatedly shouting "Press!"; video and contemporaneous accounts described cuts and bruising to her face and the seizure of camera equipment. Fellow producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous was kicked in the chest, shoved against a wall, and arrested when he tried to assist, according to sworn allegations later filed in federal court. Amy Goodman was grabbed and arrested after she approached officers to ask about her colleagues' detention; she was charged with obstruction and later released.
Press-freedom groups also recorded searches and seizures of reporters' equipment, prolonged detention, and preemptive raids that swept up media observers. Members of the I Witness Video collective were detained during a house raid days before the convention and later reported further police intimidation while attempting to document misconduct. A subsequent review faulted St. Paul police for their handling of journalists during the RNC, raising concerns about future treatment of alternative and new-media reporters at mass events.
Press-freedom groups reported widespread interference with newsgathering during Occupy Wall Street, including arrests and detentions of working journalists, equipment seizures, and the use of force against clearly identified media in New York City and other U.S. cities. During the November 15, 2011, clearance of Zuccotti Park, major outlets reported being kept behind police perimeters and facing aggressive treatment, prompting PEN, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), and Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to document access restrictions and arrests of credentialed reporters that week.
Monitors described recurring tactics and outcomes: close-range pepper spray, strikes with batons during dispersals, and zip-tie detentions amid kettling operations; reporters also cited seizure or damage of cameras and storage media while documenting arrests. In New York, an NYPD deputy inspector's use of pepper spray at Union Square on September 24, 2011, was later found to violate departmental rules and drew discipline, and CPJ and RSF recorded additional cases in which credentialed media were pepper-sprayed or struck while filming marches. Elsewhere, news crews reported injuries while on assignment, such as a concussion sustained by a KGO-TV cameraman amid Occupy-related unrest in Oakland.
Arrests of journalists were frequently custodial and sometimes occurred after reporters identified themselves as press. By November 11, CPJ had tallied at least seven arrests nationwide; during the Zuccotti Park clearance and related operations on November 15, an Associated Press reporter and photographer were among those detained uptown. Contemporary counts put New York's total at more than two dozen journalist arrests by late November 2011. Credentialing practices also drew scrutiny: officials advised that an NYPD press pass would reduce arrest risk even as new passes were temporarily unavailable until January 2012 and required proof of crossing police lines to qualify, a standard difficult to meet without credentials. Overall, press-freedom monitors characterized 2011âÂÂ2012 as a significant test of protest-coverage access and safety for U.S. journalists, centered on arrests, force, and barriers to observation rather than on protest activity itself.
Following the police killing of Michael Brown, Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency and imposed a midnight curfew on August 16, then activated the Missouri National Guard on August 18; a federal court later enjoined police from enforcing an ad-hoc "five-second rule" that required people â including reporters â to keep moving or face arrest.
Amid these conditions, multiple journalists reported physical force, chemical agents, equipment seizures, and custodial arrests while on assignment. Wesley Lowery (The Washington Post) and Ryan Reilly (HuffPost) were arrested in a McDonald's on August 13 after police ordered everyone to leave; Lowery wrote that an officer slammed him into a soda machine before cuffing him. They were released the same night; nearly a year later, local prosecutors filed misdemeanor charges, which drew press-freedom criticism.
Press-freedom groups documented incidents including pepper spray at close range, batons strikes, equipment seizures, and access restrictions during curfew and dispersal operations â comparisons were drawn to the November 15, 2011 Zuccotti Park raid "media blackout" claims during clearing operations â and on nights when tear gas and rubber bullets were widely used.
During the April 2021 demonstrations in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, journalists reported force, detentions, and arrests by the Minnesota State Patrol and partnering agencies despite displaying press credentials. Documented cases included CNN producer Carolyn Sung being thrown to the ground, zip-tied, and jailed; The New York Times freelancer Joshua Rashaad McFadden detained and tackled; and WCCO-TV journalists ordered to lie prone and "processed" at a checkpoint. Local coverage the same weekend also reported "journalists detained" amid mass arrest operations.
On April 16, 2021, U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright issued a temporary restraining order in Goyette v. City of Minneapolis barring state officials from arresting, threatening, or using force on clearly identified members of the press and clarifying that dispersal orders did not apply to journalists; nevertheless, reporters described continued mass detentions and the photographing of journalists and their credentials that night. The ACLU of Minnesota publicized the order, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press criticized the credential-photography practice; amid criticism, the State Patrol said it would stop detaining, pepper-spraying, or photographing journalists. Subsequent tallies indicate that at least 21 journalists were detained across three days in Brooklyn Center.
A photojournalist for Fox 7 Austin was detained during the protest after reportedly becoming caught in a scuffle between law enforcement and students. Fox 7 Austin shared video footage of the incident on social media, stating the employee was pushed by an officer into another before being thrown to the ground and arrested. Another Texas journalist was knocked down during the police response, sustaining visible bleeding before being handed off to emergency medical staff by officers.