In 1812, a violent mob broke into a Baltimore newspaper office and attacked its owner Alexander Contee Hanson, whose articles opposing the War of 1812 angered them. In an example of lack of protection of press freedom, government officials refused to defend the newspaper owner and his defenders, even in jail, where another attack occurred, killing one and disfiguring another.
Events
In part because of the efforts of Hayden Covington, one of its former attorneys, Jehovah’s Witnesses were one of the one of the most effective litigators of First Amendment issues in the 20th century. Their aggressive door-to-door witnessing often brought them into conflict with local licensing and permit laws. Their pacifism, and their refusal to salute
In the 1847 Ritchie Affair, the U.S. Senate revoked floor privileges its official printer Thomas Ritchie who also was editor of a partisan newspaper after he published an article suggesting a senator was on the side of Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Although the Ritchie affair was short-lived, it raised significant issues about freedom of the press, including free speech during wartime and congressional pressure on political reporting.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees a number of important rights, which many Americans regard as inherent in the ideas of human dignity and equality. These freedoms are much wider than those in some other countries whose rulers subordinate personal freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly and petition to national unity or ideology. U.S.