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."

1789–1865: Early republic and Civil War

1797–1801: John Adams' presidency

1798: Sedition Act prosecutions against anti-Federalist press

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.

1829–1836: Andrew Jackson's presidency

1835: Georgia Guard seizes the Cherokee Phoenix press

In 1835, during the period leading up to the Trail of Tears, the Georgia Guard — a state militia unit organized to police Cherokee territory claimed by Georgia – 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.

1853–1856: Franklin Pierce's presidency

1856: Sacking of Lawrence sheriff seizes the press

1861–1865: Abraham Lincoln's presidency

1861: Union military arrests press 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 – acting under orders from Brigadier General Nathaniel Lyon — suppressed the Daily Missouri State Journal and arrested its editor, Joseph W. Tucker, on a treason charge. In Baltimore, multiple papers—including the South and the Daily Exchange—were 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.

1864: Federal seizure of the New York World and Journal of Commerce 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 proclamation—circulated in the guise of an Associated Press dispatch—named 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 forgers—journalists 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 – including Democratic editors and some Republicans – 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.

1866–1945: Reconstruction and world wars

1897–1901: William McKinley's presidency

1898: Wilmington massacre and burning of The Daily Record

On November 10, 1898, white supremacists in Wilmington, North Carolina, set fire to the offices of the African American–owned 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 leaders—actions 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.

1901–1908: Theodore Roosevelt's presidency

1903–1904: Colorado Labor Wars arrests over journalist coverage

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 damage—after which the paper reappeared with an anti-union line. These actions formed part of a broader suspension of civil liberties—including freedom of the press—under state military rule.

1913–1920: Woodrow Wilson's presidency

1917–1918: Espionage Act journalist prosecutions

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 – postal bans, loss of mailing status, and Espionage Act prosecutions – 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.

1918–1920: Sedition Act prosecutions of journalists

Enforcement of the Sedition Act of 1918 — which expanded the Espionage Act of 1917 — 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.