{"id":3829,"date":"2020-12-30T18:03:04","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T18:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=3829"},"modified":"2026-02-17T16:51:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T16:51:50","slug":"censorship","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/censorship\/","title":{"rendered":"Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jacques Louis David, The Death of Socrates, painted 1787. (Wikimedia).<\/p><\/div>\n

Also known as “prior restraint,” censorship is when government (local, state or federal)\u00a0 prevents the publication or distribution of books, films, newspapers or other media over objections about content.\u00a0 Censorship by government raises\u00a0 Constitutional issues, and may trigger “strict scrutiny” review in the courts.<\/p>\n

An important point here is that the US First Amendment prohibits government<\/span><\/strong><\/em> censorship. This is called the “state action doctrine<\/a>.”\u00a0 When censorship occurs between private people or entities, the courts may be asked to protect private First Amendment rights.\u00a0 Usually, the courts side with the private entities and their right to make editorial decisions.<\/p>\n

When the New York Times does or does not print a letter to the editor, it is their\u00a0 call under the First Amendment.\u00a0 A decision by YouTube to promote (or demote) videos by the Prager group (*not an actual university)\u00a0<\/em> was not an infringement\u00a0 of Prager’s First Amendment rights, but rather, an exercise of YouTube’s editorial rights under the First Amendment.\u00a0 (See articles in Harvard Law Review<\/a>\u00a0 and\u00a0 Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression<\/a>\u00a0 about Prager v YouTube, 2020).<\/p>\n

Globally, intervention by governments in the content of social media is an ongoing battle between a wide variety of forces involving questions of social responsibility and freedom of expression on all sides of the political spectrum. Some of these battles are described in series of editorials in the Washington Post<\/a> and \u00a0the London-based Financial Times<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0(Most of our emphasis in this course is on US law, but we need to keep an eye on international media issues as well).<\/em><\/p>\n

Censorship dates back thousands of years.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ancient philosophers such as Confucius and Socrates,\u00a0 and many more, faced censorship, banishment, or execution when governments considered their ideas\u00a0 dangerous.\u00a0 The term \u201ccensor\u201d comes from the Latin word c\u0113nse\u014d which means “to give an opinion, judge; to assess, reckon; to decree, determine.”\u00a0 <\/span>In ancient Rome, censors were magistrates whose duties included supervising the census and guarding moral conduct and speech.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“Just as in ancient Grecian communities, the Roman ideal of good governance included shaping the character of the people. Censorship was thus regarded as an honorable task,” said Leyton Grey in a <\/span>History of Censorship<\/a> for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy of Winnipeg.\u00a0 “Censorship has followed the free expression of men and women like a shadow throughout history.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

US historian Mary E. Hull notes that the writings of ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius were censored when an emperor considered his ideas dangerous. China’s first censorship law was made over 1,700 years ago, and it is still a basic feature of Chinese society today.<\/p>\n

The expansion of mass media with the printing press in the 1450s led to increased demands for church and government censorship in Europe.\u00a0\u00a0The Catholic Church issued and updated an\u00a0 “Index of Prohibited Book<\/a>s” from 1560 to 1948, and took an active role in banning\u00a0 lewd or irreverent\u00a0 movies until the 1950s. And in fifteenth century England,\u00a0 licensing acts were designed to silence unorthodox writers and thinkers.<\/p>\n

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William Blackstone, British jurist, opposed prior restraint censorship<\/p><\/div>\n

Routine prior restraint of printing ended around 1689<\/strong> in Britain with the Glorious Revolution of the adoption of the English Bill of Rights<\/a>.\u00a0 And as we have seen (in Section 3), discussions about political freedom and freedom of the press begin emerging in this era. Milton\u2019s Areopagitica, Montesque\u2019s Spirit of the Laws, the Cato Letters, are known alongside arguments for free speech by American revolutionaries like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Sam Adams and Patrick Henry.<\/p>\n

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In the 1700s. William Blackstone<\/a>, a\u00a0 prominent British legal scholar, wrote in his Commentaries on the Laws of England\u00a0 <\/a>(published in four volumes from 1765 to 1769):<\/p>\n

\u201cThe liberty of the press is indeed essential to the nature of a free state: but this consists in laying no prior restraints upon publications, and not in freedom from censure for criminal matter when published.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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The US has wrestled<\/strong> with censorship throughout its history. An early example of the ongoing fight against censorship was the trial of New York publisher John Peter Zenger in 1734. He was accused of seditious libel — saying defamatory things about the government — but the jury found that Zenger printed the truth about the government, and this established the precedent that truth should be accepted as a defense in libel.<\/p>\n

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Trial of John Peter Zenger, New York, 1735. (Wikimedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

We’ve covered some of the background about the US Constitution of 1787 and the formation of the First Amendment in 1791, and the contradiction to law in the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798 (which expired in 1800). We’ve also\u00a0 noted that before the Civil War, state laws imposed heavy censorship, with strong penalties for discussions or publications advocating the abolition of slavery.\u00a0 After the Civil War, and well into the 20th century, critics of Jim Crow racism were often punished by states or through extra-legal riots and lynchings.<\/p>\n

Censorship has been officially imposed during times of national emergency. During World War I,\u00a0 thousands of people were jailed\u00a0under the Sedition Act of 1918.<\/a> \u00a0which turned critics of the government into criminals, whether or not they advocated non-violent change.<\/p>\n

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We’ll look at three major prior restraint cases involving direct\u00a0 government censorship of individuals:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

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Louis Brandeis: \u201cThose who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty\u2026.”<\/p><\/div>\n