The courtship between the First Amendment and the mass media can trace its roots back to Colonial America. The mechanical printing press, invented in the fifteenth century, had come across the ocean and was being employed by the American colonies for the dissemination of many messages, some of which were political. England, angered that these certain messages openly criticized their government of the New World, sought to inhibit free speech. The three mechanisms that they used, government censorship, taxation, and seditious libel, comprised America's first encounter with prior restraint.

Early Prior Restraint

The first mechanism of prior restraint in the American colonies was government censorship. This practice, though not shared by all colonies, was a younger brother of England's mandatory licensing of all printing presses. The English licensing, introduced in 1530, required that all persons wishing to run a press meet...