The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the extent of US involvement in Vietnam during five presidencies , speaks to Index

The man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the extent of US involvement in Vietnam during five presidencies , speaks to Index
Volume 50.02 Summer 2021
Jolyon Rubinstein fears a British legislative agenda that could stifle protest, satire and the very foundations of democracy
Index's new issue of the magazine looks at the importance of whistleblowers in upholding our democracies. Featured are stories such as the case of Reality Winner, written by her sister Brittany. Despite being released from prison, the former...
The American author talks about laughter and the power to subvert
Celebrated author Ma Jian reflects on the terrible legacy of the Chinese Communist Party in its centenary year
Volume 50.01 Spring 2021
Index looks back on 100 years of the Chinese Communist Party and how their censorship laws continue to shape the lives of people around the world and threaten their right to free speech. Inside this edition are articles by exiled writer Ma Jian and...
Celebrated author Ma Jian reflects on the terrible legacy of the Chinese Communist Party in its centenary year
A look at what’s inside our Winter 2020 issue, which looks at the stories that should have received more attention were it not for Covid
A quarterly journal set up in 1972, Index on Censorship magazine has published oppressed writers and refused to be silenced across hundreds of issues.
The brainchild of the poet Stephen Spender, and translator Michael Scammell, the magazine’s very first issue included a never-before-published poem, written while serving a sentence in a labour camp, by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who went on to win a Nobel prize later that year.
The magazine continued to be a thorn in the side of Soviet censors, but its scope was far wider. From the beginning, Index declared its mission to stand up for free expression as a fundamental human right for people everywhere – it was particularly vocal in its coverage of the oppressive military regimes of southern Europe and Latin America but was also clear that freedom of expression was not only a problem in faraway dictatorships. The winter 1979 issue, for example, reported on a controversy in the United States in which the Public Broadcasting Service had heavily edited a documentary about racism in Britain and then gone to court attempting to prevent screenings of the original version. Learn more.