Throughout the Pre-20th Century era, newspapers had a love affair covering wars, and the reporters often report the story without any concern from a highly ranked official. However, during wars like the French Revolution, they were censorship from officials in France.
French journals and Gazettes could not publish their stories without a privilege from the king, and were prohibited on criticizing the authority of the French government.
French Journalists who violated these rules will face jail time for life. An example would be a publisher, who was locked in a cage at Mont-Saint-Michel until he died.
Wow, these laws for French journalists is the so-called death penalty. Then in 1807, the Alien and Sedition Act came into the play. The law states that Proponents claimed the acts were designed to protect the United States from to prevent attacks from weakening the U.S. government.
However, even with the Sedition Act, they are current areas of no free press in certain stories, especially in the U.S. During the Civil War, southern states outlawed abolitionist newspapers. They were several restrictions, crackdowns, and prohibitions. It range from temporary shutdown of pro-South and Northern newspapers to preventing any independent reporting from the U.S. military invasion of the Caribbean island back in 1983.
Socialist newspapers had even poorer treatment of their coverage of World War I. In 1918, the Espionage Act was enforced. It replaced the Sedition Act of 1918, and it forbid any profanity language that was intended to cause contempt for the U.S. Government, the military, or the uniform of the armed forces.
While these laws violated the 1st amendment, it shows the prohibitions and laws reporters dealt with while reporting news from the battlefields. Just imagine whether if these laws stay intact in the Iraq War and the War on Terror.
-yasin
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