The Editors Guild was founded in 1978 with the twin objectives of protecting press freedom and for raising the standards of editorial leadership of newspapers and magazines. Eminent editors of the day felt that the lack of an organized forum of editors was one of the reasons for the sustained suppression of press freedom during the Emergency. The Editors Guild took up the issues of abuse of press freedom with the Parliament and Executive, and campaigned hard for restoring the press freedom and other freedoms which had been taken away by amendments to the Constitution, executive orders and judicial pronouncements. The freedom to report of proceedings of Parliament (Feroze Gandhi Act) which was taken away in 1976 was restored. 

The Editors Guild continued to take up the threats to press freedom when the governments of Tamil Nadu and Bihar attempted to bring draconian defamation laws. Similarly, when the central government proposed an even more harsher anti defamation act in 1986, the Editors Guild led the nationwide protests which forced the executive to shun its plans. 

In 2001 when the then government brought the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, it had provisions like preventive detention on basis of mere suspicion of journalists. The Editors Guild protested vigorously and ensured that when the ordinance was converted into an act of parliament, these threats to press freedom were not there. 

The threats to media freedom from non governmental sources has been resisted strongly by the Editors Guild, especially in militancy affected regions of North, East and Northeast India. 

At the same time, the Editors Guild has been striving for improving standards of newspaper editors.It has brought a code of ethics of Editors. Whenever there are complaints from editors of harassment from those in authority, the Editors Guild investigates and recommends action to the concerned governments and institutions. When there were largescale allegations of media bias during the Gujarat riots, the Editors Guild deputed a fact finding team to Gujarat, investigated the complaints, and circulated the findings widely.