The Justice Department may have seized AP phone records, but it’s not the first time the U.S. government has gone after journalists.
Abraham Lincoln's patience for free speech was tested during the Civil War when two New York newspapers, the Journal of Commerce and the World, wrote a fake story about the president. He ordered them shut down and their publishers imprisoned.
Lincoln also had The Independent Telegraph System, which dispersed the story, taken over by the military.
Before that, Lincoln's General Ambrose Burnside shut down the Chicago Times for three days in 1863 for speaking out against the president.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets when the Times was shut. In response, Lincoln, who hadn't supported Burnside's decision to shut the newspaper down, ordered that it be allowed to resume publication.
Via: Mike Munden / AP
The Sedition Act of 1798 made it illegal to openly criticize the government.
The law was created to specifically target media who opposed the Federalist Party, then led by President John Adams. An estimated 25 individuals were arrested under the act. Among them were editors of the General Advertiser in Philadelphia; the Boston Independent Chronicle, and the Vermont Gazette, as well as printers who worked for them.
Charles Schenck was arrested in 1917 under the Espionage Act when he, along with some of his cohorts, distributed leaflets protesting the draft.
The Espionage Act was made even stronger with the renewal of the Sedition Act in 1918. Schenck's case was eventually brought to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Act did not violate Schenck's First Amendment rights.
Source: 84d1f3.medialib.glogster.com
