Censorship and the New York Times

TYPE OF WORK: New York City newspaper

FOUNDED: 1851

SUBJECT MATTER: Daily news and editorial commentaries

SIGNIFICANCE: For more than a century, the New York Times has been one of the most respected newspapers in the world, but it has faced several First Amendment challenges.

During the Red Scare of the early 1950s, the New York Times published strong editorial attacks on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting activities and in favor of school integration. Senator James O. Eastland of Mississippi retaliated in 1955 by launching an investigation of the paper through the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Internal Security. Twenty-six subpoenas were issued to current and former Times employees suspected of being communists. When a few employees refused to answer the subcommittee’s questions by citing the Fifth Amendment, the newspaper’s response was less than courageous. Publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger fired the employees on the grounds that they had “sensitive” jobs requiring “trust and confidence.” Nevertheless, the newspaper proudly announced that “long after all that was known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The New York Times will still be speaking for the men who make it, and only for the men who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it.”

Nearly a decade later, the Times achieved the rare distinction of having its name identified with a landmark court decision protecting freedom of the press. In New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), the US Supreme Court held that under the First Amendment, public officials and public figures could not recover for libel for the publication of false and defamatory statements, unless they proved that the statements were made with “actual malice,” that is, with knowledge of falsity or in reckless disregard of the truth. The decision significantly expanded freedom of expression by insulating the press from libel suits used to censor news stories on controversial political and social issues.

Less than seven years later, the Times again found itself at the center of a landmark First Amendment case. On June 13, 1971, the paper’s Sunday edition began publishing The Pentagon Papers, a seven-thousand-page top-secret government study of how the United States had gotten involved in the Vietnam War. One journalist called the publication “probably the single largest unauthorized disclosure of classified documents in the history of the United States.” After the Nixon Administration failed to obtain a preliminary injunction restraining further publication of the material, the case swiftly reached the US Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the Times. In a per curiam opinion, the Court held that “any system of prior restraints of expression comes to this Court bearing a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity” and that the government had failed to meet its burden of proof. Nine individual opinions were issued. Justice Hugo Black wrote that “every moment’s continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment.”

Two decades later, former US Solicitor General Erwin N. Griswold, who had represented the government before the Supreme Court in The Pentagon Papers case, conceded that “in hindsight, it is clear to me that no harm was done by publication of the Pentagon Papers.” Far from causing harm, the Times had disclosed that successive administrations had misled Congress and the public about American involvement in the Vietnam War. The Times had indeed served the highest ideals of journalism and freedom of the press. In October 2025, journalists from major outlets, including the New York Times, returned their Pentagon press credentials in protest against rules requiring preapproved reporting, marking a significant modern press freedom dispute.

In the early twenty-first century, the Times faced censorship abroad. In Thailand and in Pakistan, front-page articles on nationally sensitive issues—anxiety around the poor health of the country’s monarch at that time and the military’s complicity with Osama bin Laden, respectively—were omitted when printed locally. Chinese authorities have sought to block its citizens’ access to the Times entirely since the publication of a 2012 exposé of then–Premier Wen Jiabao’s family wealth. Nevertheless, the Times has circumvented the restrictions by creating “mirror” websites, social media accounts, and smartphone apps where content can be delivered until they are shut down.

The Times has itself been accused of censorship. In the wake of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo shooting, in which twelve people were fatally shot at the satirical news magazine’s Paris office after it published caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, the Times reprinted neither the offending cover nor the subsequent response by Charlie Hebdo. Instead, the online editions linked to sites that had the images. Similarly, many images created for the Times’ own opinion section are never printed, deemed too offensive or inappropriate for publication. The New York Times faced public criticism and boycotts from writers and contributors over its coverage of the Israel–Gaza conflict, raising renewed debates about bias, editorial decisions, and censorship in mainstream media.

In the early 2020s, the Times faced criticism and accusations of censoring information related to the origins of COVID-19, election integrity, and the Hunter Biden laptop story. During Donald Trump’s presidency, the Times was frequently the target of criticism. Trump described the news outlet, along with several others, as “the enemy of the people” and stated it provided readers with “fake news.” Press freedom organizations criticized this characterization of the Times as a dangerous attack on the press and on the First Amendment. In 2026, the New York Times successfully challenged Pentagon restrictions on reporting, with a federal court ruling that limits on publishing ‘unauthorized’ information violated the First Amendment and constituted unconstitutional censorship.

Bibliography

Alwood, Edward. Dark Days in the Newsroom: McCarthyism Aimed at the Press. Temple UP, 2007.

Chandler, Adam. “Censoring the Times in Thailand.” Atlantic, 22 Sept. 2015, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/new-york-times-blocked-in-thailand/406735. Accessed 9 May. 2026.

Folta, James. “300+ Pledge to Boycott the New York Times’ Op-Ed Page over Their Anti-Palestinian Bias.” Literary Hub, 27 Oct. 2025, lithub.com/300-pledge-to-boycott-the-new-york-times-op-ed-page-over-their-anti-palestinian-bias/. Accessed 9 May 2026.

Gold, Susan Dudley. The Pentagon Papers: National Security or the Right to Know. Cavendish, 2005.

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Kraus, Jerelle. All the Art That’s Fit to Print (and Some That Wasn’t): Inside the New York Times Op-Ed Page. Columbia UP, 2012.

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Szoldra, Paul. “New York Times Readers in Pakistan Got a Front Page Missing Half Its Content.” Business Insider, 22 Mar. 2014, nymag.com/intelligencer/2014/03/nyt-story-about-pakistan-disappeared-in-pakistan.html. Accessed 9 May. 2026.

Vile, John R. “New York Times v. Department of Defense (2026, U.S. District Court, D.C.).” First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University, 27 Mar. 2026, firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/new-york-times-v-department-of-defense-2026-u-s-district-court-d-c/. Accessed 9 May 2026.