[1] The motivation for newspaper theft is usually to suppress circulation of a story, item, or advertisement that is viewed as unfavorable or offensive by an individual or group.
"[1] These laws are based on a logic that newspapers, especially less powerful local papers with smaller print runs, serve a valuable expression of speech that must be protected from censorship which cannon otherwise be prosecuted as a theft.
While this does not normally violate any law, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in the 2004 case Rossignol v. Voorhaar that public officials who purchase a large portion of the print run of a newspaper with the intention of keeping a story out of the view of the public are acting in violation of the First Amendment and are liable for civil damages.
In January 2003 Chief Judge Wilkinson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the fourth circuit decided in favor of Rossignol.
[13] Richard Hongisto was the Police Chief of San Francisco for 44 days ending on March 15, 1992, a period which overlapped with the verdict in the Rodney King case.
[14] On March 8, 1992 the Bay Times, a free local biweekly gay newspaper, published a front-page story that was critical of the way that Hongisto handled demonstrators in San Francisco following the results of the case.
[17] As of December 2018, Maryland and California have laws specifically prohibiting taking large amounts of free newspapers.
The UWM Post reported that Kostal had directed Hapka to steal the newspapers in order to limit the amount of criticism that reached the student government officials who had organized the event.
[20] The UWM Post decided to civilly sue Kostal and Sidhu as representatives of the state, after consulting the SPLC, for violation of the paper's first amendment rights.
[22] Likewise, after the Technician, North Carolina State University's student-run newspaper, published a story that leaked the real name of a candidate that was running anonymously as "The Pirate Captain", 5000 copies of the paper were stolen across campus.
[24] The witness took an image of these two men and they were later identified to be Jason Polsky and Alexander Montiel, both pledges of Kappa Sigma who admitted to having stolen the newspapers.
[27] On February 24, 2016, the Chanticleer, the student run newspaper for Coastal Carolina University (CCU), published an article on the student government associated race that included a reference to the CCU chapter of the Kappa Sigma fraternity being suspended from the University as the result of sexual assault and a hazing allegations.
[30] In the film Absence of Malice, the character Teresa Perrone attempts unsuccessfully to destroy a run of newspapers that has a story exposing her abortion, before she commits suicide.
In an episode of King of the Hill, Hank removes an embarrassing photograph from all his neighbor's local newspapers before they woke up that morning.
In an episode of Better Call Saul, Chuck McGill stole a newspaper from a neighbors house to see what his brother, Jimmy was hiding from him.