Censorship in the United States

Censorship in the United States involves the suppression of speech or public communication and raises issues of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Interpretation of this fundamental freedom has varied since its enshrinement. Traditionally, the First Amendment was regarded as applying only to the Federal government, leaving the states and local communities free to censor or not. As the applicability of states rights in lawmaking vis-a-vis citizens' national rights began to wain in the wake of the Civil War, censorship by any level of government eventually came under scrutiny, but not without resistance. For example, in recent decades, censorial restraints increased during the 1950s period of widespread anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In ''Miller v. California'' (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment's freedom of speech does not apply to obscenity, which can, therefore, be censored. While certain forms of hate speech are legal so long as they do not turn to action or incite others to commit illegal acts, more severe forms have led to people or groups (such as the Ku Klux Klan) being denied marching permits or the Westboro Baptist Church being sued, although the initial adverse ruling against the latter was later overturned on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court case ''Snyder v. Phelps''.

The First Amendment protects against censorship imposed by law, but does not protect against corporate censorship, the restraint of speech of spokespersons, employees, or business associates by threatening monetary loss, loss of employment, or loss of access to the marketplace. Legal expenses can be a significant hidden restraint where there is fear of suit for libel. Many people in the United States are in favor of restricting censorship by corporations, citing a slippery slope that if corporations do not follow the Bill of Rights, the government will be influenced.

Analysts from Reporters Without Borders ranked the United States 42nd in the world out of 180 countries in their 2022 Press Freedom Index. Certain forms of speech, such as obscenity and defamation, are restricted in communications media by the government or by the industry on its own.

History

Colonial government

Censorship came to British America with the ''Mayflower'' "when the governor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, William Bradford learned n 1629ref name="ReferenceA">John P. McWilliams, "Thomas Morton: Phoenix of New England Memory" in ''New England's Crises and Cultural Memory: Literature, Politics, History, Religion, 1620–1860''. Cambridge University Press, , pp. 44–73. that Thomas Morton of Merrymount, in addition to his other misdeed, had 'composed sundry rhymes and verses, some tending to lasciviousness' the only solution was to send a military expedition to break up Morton's high-living."

A celebrated legal case in 1734–1735 involved John Peter Zenger, a New York newspaper printer who regularly published material critical of the corrupt Governor of New York, William Cosby. He was jailed eight months before being tried for seditious libel. Andrew Hamilton defended him and was made famous for his speech, ending in "nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power ... by speaking and writing the truth." Zenger's lawyers attempted to establish the precedent that a statement, even if defamatory, is not libelous if it can be proved. While the judge ruled against his arguments, Hamilton urged jury nullification in the cause of liberty and won a not guilty verdict. The Zenger case paved the way for freedom of the press to be adopted in the U.S. Constitution. As Founding Father Gouverneur Morris stated, "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America."

19th century

Beginning in the 1830s and until the American Civil War, the US Postmaster General refused to allow mailmen to carry abolitionist pamphlets to the South.

On March 3, 1873, significant censorship legislation, the ''Comstock Law'', was passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration; an Act for the "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use." The Act criminalized usage of the U.S. Postal Service to send any of the following items: erotica; contraceptives; abortifacients; sex toys; personal letters alluding to any sexual content or information; or any information regarding the above items.

The law was named after Anthony Comstock, U.S. Postal Inspector and founder of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who was known for his crusades against sexual expression and education. Comstock's name became a byword for censorship, inspiring terms such as "comstockery" and "comstockism" to refer to such activities. He opposed the distribution of information about abortion and birth control, and he is credited with having destroyed 15 tons of books, almost 4,000,000 pictures and 284,000 pounds of printing plates for making "objectionable" books.

20th century

Wilson administration

The Sedition Act of 1918 () was an Act of the United States Congress that extended the Espionage Act of 1917 to cover a broader range of offenses, notably speech and the expression of opinion that cast the government or the war effort in a negative light or interfered with the sale of government bonds.

It forbade the use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, its flag, or its armed forces or that caused others to view the American government or its institutions with contempt. Those convicted under the act generally received sentences of imprisonment for five to 20 years. The act also allowed the Postmaster General to refuse to deliver mail that met those same standards for punishable speech or opinion. It applied only to times "when the United States is in war." The U.S. was in a declared a state of war at the time of passage, the First World War. The law was repealed on December 13, 1920.Stone, 230

Though the legislation enacted in 1918 is commonly called the Sedition Act, it was actually a set of amendments to the Espionage Act.

Franklin D. Roosevelt administration

The "Radio Priest" Charles Coughlin started broadcasting in 1926 and entertained an audience of millions in the 1930s, but became increasingly anti-democratic, antisemitic, and sympathetic to Nazi Germany. Coughlin was denied a license when the government first started requiring them for broadcasters, forcing him to purchase air time from others. He was forced off the air completely when the private National Association of Broadcasters adopted rules banning "spokesmen of controversial public issues". The mailing permit of Coughlin's newspaper ''Social Justice'' was suspended under the Espionage Act of 1917, confining delivery to the local Boston area. The paper was shut down after the government persuaded Coughlin's bishop to stop his political activities entirely.

The Office of Censorship, an emergency wartime agency, heavily censored reporting during World War II. During World War I, and to a greater extent during World War II, war correspondents accompanied military forces, and their reports were subject to advance censorship to preserve military secrets. The extent of such censorship was not generally challenged, and no major court case arose from this issue, and even the Supreme Court found it constitutional on the grounds that it "protected free speech from tyranny."

On December 19, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8985, which established the Office of Censorship and conferred on its director the power to censor international communications in "his absolute discretion." Byron Price was selected as the Director of Censorship. However, censorship was not limited to reporting; postal censorship also took place. "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."

Truman administration

McCarthyism is the term describing a period of intense anti-Communist suspicion in the United States that lasted roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s when the Smith Act trials of communist party leaders occurred. The Alien Registration Act or Smith Act of 1940 made it a criminal offense for anyone to "knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the ... desirability or propriety of overthrowing the Government of the United States or of any State by force or violence, or for anyone to organize any association which teaches, advises or encourages such an overthrow, or for anyone to become a member of or to affiliate with any such association." Hundreds of Communists were prosecuted under this law between 1941 and 1957. Eleven leaders of the Communist Party were charged and convicted under the Smith Act in 1949. Ten defendants were given sentences of five years and the eleventh was sentenced to three years. All of the defense attorneys were cited for contempt of court and were also given prison sentences. In 1951, twenty-three other leaders of the party were indicted including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, who was removed from the board of the ACLU in 1940 for membership in a political organization which supported totalitarian dictatorship. By 1957 over 140 leaders and members of the Communist Party had been charged under the law. In 1952, the Immigration and Nationality, or McCarran-Walter, Act was passed. This law allowed the government to deport immigrants or naturalized citizens engaged in subversive activities and also to bar suspected subversives from entering the country.

Eisenhower administration

The Communist Control Act of 1954 was passed with overwhelming support in both houses of Congress after very little debate. Jointly drafted by Republican John Marshall Butler and Democrat Hubert Humphrey, the law was an extension of the Internal Security Act of 1950, and sought to outlaw the Communist Party by declaring that the party, as well as "Communist-Infiltrated Organizations" were "not entitled to any of the rights, privileges, and immunities attendant upon legal bodies."

John W. Powell, a journalist who reported the allegations that US was carrying out germ warfare in the Korean War
in an English-language journal in Shanghai, the "China Monthly Review", was indicted with 13 counts of sedition, along with his 2 editors. All defendants were acquitted of all charges over the next six years, but Powell was blackballed from the journalism industry for the rest of his life.

The book-burning of Wilhelm Reich's work took place between 1956 and 1960. It has been cited as the worst example of censorship in the United States. ''The Guardian'' called it "the only federally sanctioned book burning on American soil." He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.Sharaf 1994, p.&nbs
477

In 1960, ''The China Lobby in American Politics'', by scholar Ross Y. Koen, was suppressed by the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics at the behest of the Chinese Nationalist Party – at that time the ruling party of the martial dictatorship in Taiwan. The book largely concerned the influence of the China lobby in the US congress and the executive branch of the government. It also detailed heroin trafficking by the Chinese Nationalist Party, which was later corroborated by other scholars. After 4000 copies of the book had been printed, at the intervention of the State Department the publisher recalled the book and discontinued publication. Some copies of the book nevertheless found their way into rare book repositories at some universities. According to Richard C. Kagan, right-wing groups stole many remaining copies of the book from libraries. The book was reprinted in 1974 after other scholars had shown Koen's findings to be accurate.

Nixon administration

In later conflicts, the degree to which war reporting was subject to censorship varied, and in some cases, it has been alleged that the censorship was as much political as military in purpose. This was particularly true during the Vietnam War. The executive branch of the federal government attempted to prevent ''The New York Times'' from publishing the top-secret Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, warning that doing so would be considered an act of treason under the Espionage Act of 1917. The newspaper prevailed in the famous ''New York Times Co. v. United States'' case.

Clinton administration

The Child Online Protection Act, passed in 1998 and signed by Bill Clinton, was criticized and legally challenged by civil liberties groups, claiming that it "reduces the Internet to what is fit for a six-year-old. Through legal actions and permanent injunction, the act never took effect.

21st century

George W. Bush administration

Press censorship issues arose again during the administration of President George W. Bush during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. Journalists who were embedded within the armed forces had to accept certain terms and restrictions on what they were reporting and additionally were required to make their reports available to media operations staff prior to publication. This process was put in place to not compromise security nor endanger troops by revealing exact locations.

President Bush's administration also attempted to censor results of climate studies, "nearly half of 1,600 government scientists at seven agencies ranging from NASA to the EPA had been warned against using terms like 'global warming' in reports or speeches, throughout Bush's eight-year presidency."

Obama administration

In July 2014, the Society of Professional Journalists published an open letter signed by 38 journalist organizations to Barack Obama, criticizing efforts to "stifle or block" coverage, despite his 2008 campaign promises to provide transparency. The letter cited several examples in which the administration blocked reporters from speaking directly to specific staff without obtaining prior approval from the head of their department. Obama's use of the Espionage Act was criticized as aggressive by CNN journalist Jake Tapper. Tapper would later clarify that he was not implying such use was towards actual whistleblowers.

Trump administration

Following the election of former president Donald Trump, his administration pursued means of preventing federal staff from speaking publicly, with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, "the largest scientific society in the world", warning of possible "censorship and intimidation" of the American scientific community. The Trump administration ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to scrub climate change information from their website, instructed that all studies by EPA and the United States Department of Agriculture be reviewed by political appointees before publication, and in some cases issued ''de facto'' gag orders to agencies who conduct research. The White House had also denied access to a select group of media outlets including ''The New York Times'', CNN, BBC
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