Abstract Press regulation follows a political format that prevails for a period of time. In the era of the authoritarian New Order government under Suharto, the press was so strictly regulated not only through laws and regulations, but also in the form of government policies that did not provide wiggle room for a free press life. This research shows that the change in the political format that is more democratic after the fall of the Soeharto Government in 1998 gave more space to the press. This study uses normative legal research meetings with written documents, laws and regulations and court decisions as the main source of this research.