U.S. Presidency and Censorship

Definition: Head of state and of government of the US federal government

Significance: Since the founding of the republic, chief executives have wrested with the question of how they should exercise their powers while also protecting the free exchange of information

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once suggested that the Founders of the United States, suspicious of traditional organs of government, expected the nation’s press to serve as “a fourth institution outside the government.” Thus, the news media, from the early years of the republic, sought to play a special role, battling power hungry presidents and congresses. As Stewart explained, the press placed “an additional check” on the three official branches of government, which too often restricted basic freedoms. In their struggle with strong-willed government officials, the news media could depend on the US Constitution as a bulwark against censorship and attacks prompted by the other branches of government.

Jefferson and the Press

Despite the wishes of the Constitution’s framers and the strength of the First Amendment, presidents have historically viewed the press—and the freedoms demanded by the media—with wariness and, at times, outright hostility. This is especially evident in the transformation of the generally enlightened Thomas Jefferson. Before being elected president, Jefferson said: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” After eight years of press criticism, however, Jefferson’s defense of the “fourth institution outside our government” turned sour. The media’s close examination of Jefferson’s bold use of executive authority to purchase the Louisiana Territory, partisan bickering among Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican allies, questions about Vice President Aaron Burr’s western exploits, Jefferson’s advocacy of the economically ruinous Embargo Act, his pursuit of North Africa’s Barbary pirates, his unorthodox religious beliefs, and his defense of a broad interpretation of executive privilege all caused Jefferson’s views. He said that “the abuses of freedom of the press have been carried to a length never before known or borne by any civilized nation.” He added bitterly, “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper.” While Jefferson did not actually suggest censorship, he considered the media to be an unworthy branch of government; presidents and their actions should be shielded from the prying eyes of inquisitive journalists.

Presidents and the press are by their very natures symbiotic, but also adversarial as they define each other’s territory. They might need each other for promotional purposes but they can often abhor one another. Honeymoons between the two quickly deteriorate, amid charges of censorship and lust for power, into acrimonious divorces. Nowhere are the tensions in the president-press relationship better illustrated than during times of national conflict.

Lincoln and His Critics

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was unwavering in his determination to triumph on the battlefield and restore the union. Loosely interpreting his role as commander-in-chief, he suspended three hundred newspapers for “treason” or “disloyalty.” One thousand people were arrested as Lincoln trampled on the Bill of Rights and censored the flow of information. In February 1862, telegraph lines were placed under White House control. Federal officials seized the Chicago Times and the Philadelphia Christian Observer. One of Lincoln’s critics, Ohio newspaper editor Edson Olds, was arrested and imprisoned for raising questions about the president’s conduct of the war. While in jail, Olds was nominated to the Ohio legislature; he won and was released. Similarly, Philadelphia journalist Albert Broilean was imprisoned for criticizing Lincoln’s 1862 State of the Union speech. After Broilean apologized to Lincoln, he gained his freedom. Suspending habeas corpus, censoring the press, and jailing outspoken journalists were, in Lincoln’s opinion, sometimes permissible in times of what he called “extraordinary insurrection.” Occasionally, arrest and incarceration were deemed insufficient in silencing press opposition. Clement Laird Vallandigham, co-owner of the Dayton Empire, was arrested by order of General Ambrose E. Burnside. At Lincoln’s insistence, Vallandigham was transported behind Confederate lines and abandoned.

Few presidents suffered more from editorial abuse than Lincoln. Opposition editors and disappointed favor-seekers accused him in print of vicious deeds, which the patient president usually ignored. He was falsely accused of drawing his salary in gold bars, while his soldiers were paid in deflated greenbacks. He was charged with drunkenness while making crucial decisions, with granting pardons to secure votes, and with needless butchering of armies as a result of his lust for victories. Once he was accused of outright treason. Typical of his press detractors was the La Crosse Democrat, a Wisconsin weekly, which said of the draft: “Lincoln has called for 500,000 more victims.”

On balance, however, Lincoln resisted the temptation to censor—or exile—his multitude of critics. Most of the punitive measures were taken not by the president but by military commanders such as General Burnside. For example, when Wilbur Storey, publisher of the Chicago Times questioned Lincoln’s authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, Burnside ordered the newspaper padlocked. After a three-day cooling off period, Lincoln rescinded Burnside’s military order. When put to the test, Lincoln thus defended the First Amendment and usually permitted the press to voice its criticism.

The Early Twentieth Century

By the beginning of the twentieth century, the executive branch’s willingness to control the flow of information had increased. as William McKinley used the yellow journalism of the New York World and the New York Journal to marshal public support for war with Spain. Similarly, Theodore Roosevelt grasped the fact that muckraking magazines such as Collier’s and Cosmopolitan, could be useful tools in exposing unsanitary and unethical business practices. Thus, presidents and the media could at times form partnerships that aided both.

When America entered World War I in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson appointed a former newspaper editor, George Creel, to head the Committee on Public Information, a newly formed propaganda and censorship agency. Creel’s management of domestic news censorship was based on a set of regulations prepared by the State, War, and Navy departments before the United States entered the war. These regulations, which the press voluntarily accepted, prohibited publication of such things as troop movements in the United States, ship sailings, and the identification of units being sent overseas.

However, the reporting of significant negative developments in the war were delayed because the War Department feared that such stories would damage the nation’s confidence in the war effort. Reporters who published stories without clearing them had their credentials revoked and their access to battle fronts was restricted. At first, reporters could not visit the front lines. Gradually, these restrictions were lifted and accredited correspondents could even live among the troops.

During World War II, total military censorship prevailed. Every thing written, photographed, or broadcast was scrutinized by censors. Photographs of dead American soldiers were censored. Anything that did not meet the high command’s consideration was deleted. Accreditation was used to enforce censorship. Correspondents were not allowed in the theaters of war unless they were accredited, and one of the conditions of accreditation was that the correspondent sign an agreement to submit all his copy to military or naval censorship. In some cases, heavy censorship distorted the news. For example, military censors refused to allow any mention of possible radiation effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan for three weeks after the August 1945 detonations.

Meanwhile, President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of Censorship with Byron Price as its chief on December 18, 1941, pursuant to the War Powers Act. However, the Office of Censorship could only issue guidelines relevant to domestic news censorship.

The Late Twentieth Century

World War II was the last in which total military censorship prevailed. The change in the media-military relationship began during the Korean War, when what censorship that did occur was largely imposed at the source by senior officers. In December 1950, General Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters imposed full censorship, forbidding “any criticism of the Allied conduct of the war or ’any derogatory comments’ about United Nations troops or commanders.” General MacArthur expelled some seventeen correspondents from Japan for criticizing his policies. Censorship in Korea reportedly was so political in tone and so rigidly enforced that covert efforts were made by some reporters to avoid it.

During the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962 reporters were not allowed to go on ships or planes deployed into the Caribbean to quarantine Cuba. The US Naval base on Guantanamo, Cuba, was also closed to reporters during the midst of the crisis in October and November 1962.

During the Vietnam War, reporters could travel relatively freely and combat coverage was not done by pools of reporters with military escort. In Vietnam, there were ground rules for press coverage designed to protect the security of military operations, and correspondents who violated those rules could have their press credentials lifted. But there was no formal security review or censorship. Nevertheless, censorship at the source reached its apogee in the Vietnam War. Reporters who did not have the trust of senior officers were given little information—especially as public support of the war evaporated.

Later President Richard M. Nixon’s pursuit of leaks in his administration destroyed his presidency. During the Reagan Administration’s 1983 invasion of Grenada, the Pentagon refused to let journalists accompany the invasion force or allow any journalist to travel to Grenada. At one point, four journalists reportedly were held incommunicado by the US military. A defense industry journalist commented: “A dramatic chapter in history has gone unrecorded by objective newsmen because this administration chose a course that never was undertaken in the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and Korea. It kept reporters out of the action.” Another journalist wrote: “The decision to deny access to press, radio and television reporters during the early stages of last October’s operation in Grenada ran against the course not only of military precedent but of a history of considerable media freedom in covering American military conflicts that dates back to the Civil War." A lawsuit challenging the press restrictions was dismissed as moot when the invasion ended.

Ronald Reagan’s direction of press access during the invasion of Grenada was expanded less than a decade later by President George H. W. Bush. After asserting to the US Congress his constitutional powers to commit American troops, Bush instructed a tightly controlled system of press access to report events in the Middle East. On January 7, 1991, nine days before the Persian Gulf War began, a report in the New York Times complained that the Pentagon was imposing on journalists stricter restrictions than had been used during the Vietnam War. According to the Times, Pentagon officials justified the use of pools of reporters by “logistical difficulties in providing access to rapid American military operations.” They justified security reviews on the ground that “tactical information useful to the enemy could be disseminated so quickly that it might endanger American operations.”

In opposition to the press restrictions, the Times quoted Fred S. Hoffman, a former Pentagon spokesman, as saying that the press restrictions constitute “censorship by the Government and could be abused to protect the military from criticism or embarrassment.” This charge raised the question of the extent to which the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press permitted the government to impose restrictions on the press in wartime.

The Early Twenty-First Century

George H. W. Bush had also sanctioned a ban against the press having open access to and taking photographs of the coffins carrying the remains of fallen soldiers as they were returned to the United States. His son, George W. Bush, continued this practice during his presidency and the coverage of the war in Iraq. However, when Barack Obama was elected president in 2009, he immediately ordered a review of the ban, which was ultimately overturned. Critics had felt that this kind of censorship of the casualties of the war had been controlling the public's anger regarding US involvement in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush has also been accused of using the press as a tool in a propaganda campaign to justify starting the war in Iraq, stoking American fears in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. In addition, President Bush authorized a covert spying program to be conducted by the National Security Agency, which involved monitoring e-mails and phone calls domestically. Critics claimed that this program caused members of the press to self-censor at a greater rate. While President Obama vowed to run one of the most transparent administrations upon taking office, critics such as the Committee to Protect Journalists argued that he failed to promote openness over his two terms, instead curbing the disclosure of information and restricting press access.

Obama's successor, Donald Trump, became known for taking an overtly hostile stance toward the media as a whole from the beginning of his campaign for the presidency in 2015. After his election in 2016, Trump, who favored using platforms like Twitter over traditional, regular press conferences, often sent messages that were highly critical condemnations of the press and even specific outlets or journalists. Critics and activists, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists, argued that some members of the press had been targets of harassment due to the president's frequent insistence of press bias and his issuing of statements that aimed to delegitimize the media, including referring to the media as "fake news" and "the enemy of the American people." In the first year of his presidency, it was reported that his administration had barred certain news outlets from being present at a question-and-answer session held by Sean Spicer, who was the White House's press secretary at the time, and over subsequent years of his tenure instances occurred in which he would get into heated exchanges with some reporters at conferences and, at times, would criticize their questions; at other points, particular reporters were restricted from accessing White House conferences or certain meetings the president held with figures abroad, such as North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Additionally, Trump often argued that social media sites in particular tended to practice more censorship when conservative views were expressed, and in May 2020 he signed an executive order designed to impose regulations on the ability of such social media companies to censor content through editing, restrictions, alterations, and other methods; later that year, a coalition of advocacy groups had brought a lawsuit against the order.

Press restrictions and clashes between the media and chief executives have occurred for over two centuries. Civil libertarians such as Jefferson have defended, even when they were the target of media scrutiny, the maintenance of a free and uncensored press. However, wars had repeatedly strained the unmolested flow of information, threatening the guarantees of the First Amendment.

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