[Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu) has the following on the Spanish flu:

> 
> The pandemic broke out near the end of World War I, when wartime
> censors suppressed bad news in the belligerent countries to maintain
> morale, but newspapers freely reported the outbreak in neutral Spain,
> creating a false impression of Spain as the epicenter and leading to
> the "Spanish flu" misnomer.
> 
> 
> 

What is the proof that governments censored the news reports? It seems non-trivial to substantiate this claim.

For example, searching for grounds for this claim, I found [this paper](https://journals.macewan.ca/inter_dialogue/article/view/2029). It writes the following in the abstract, and gives it as a likely reason, but it seems hard to get an actual proof of this:

> 
> Looking at Great Britain as an example of the period, it is argued
> that the virus has often been forgotten as a result of press
> censorship and state denial in a time when countries could not afford
> to look weak.
> 
> 
>