You Think Trump Is Bad for the Press? Take a Look at These Past Presidents.

Frida Ghitis: Donald Trump threatens to use legal and criminal levers to “straighten out” journalists.

She says presidents from Adams to Nixon used blunt legal and military force to silence critics.

Ghitis says only check against executive overreach is the courts, not public opinion, but public opinion.

Frida Ghitis: The Sedition Act proved enormously controversial and, eventually, unpopular.

She says the act emboldened Republican journalists, emboldened them, and ultimately proved the undoing of the Adams administration.

Ghitis says Lincoln administration suppressed over 300 Northern newspapers over the course of the Civil War .

He says Lincoln 's administration stroveve to crack down on newspapers that were hindering draft enforcement, recruitment and other elements of the war effort.

Julian Zelizer : U.S. presidents have tried to stifle the free press in the past.

Zelizer says the same pattern repeated in the 20th century , when Wilson administration enforced Sedition Act .

He says courts have been a reliable ally of free press since Nixon administration tried to shut down Pentagon Papers .