UK Media Gagged In "Official Secrets" Trial

An anonymous reader writes "According to an an article at Cryptome, the UK media has been gagged from reporting on the trial of an ex-intelligence agent. More than this, they've even been gagged from reporting on the gag! Several UK websites that were covering the story have removed it. Insidious..."

Comments

Re:does this happen often?

[peter hoffman]

The press covered Vietnam in detail. It was the "living room war" and that led directly to the protests.

It was the first conflict where television was widely available. In 1946 there were only 8,000 sets in the U.S. By 1950 there were 3.88M sets (9% of the population) and by 1955 64.5% of the population had a set. The shooting portion Korean conflict was from 1950 to 1953 so television wasn't able to have much of an affect.

The Pentagon learned their lesson from Vietnam and that is why no conflict since then has been covered by the press in the same way. Today we get the sanitized news the Pentagon wants us to get.

Btw: the last actual war the U.S. had was WWII. Everything since then has been a "conflict" or "police action" or some other term.

Not quite true

[DrSkwid]

Newspapers cannot comment on a trial such that information revealed would predjudice the outcome of someone on trial. i.e. reporting that the accused has a criminal record.

That newspapers cannot comment on unsolved crimes is untrue.

For instance one of our serial killers was called Fred West. He never went to trial because he committed suicide in custody but many of the details of the case we revealed in the media during the investigation. The press published pictures of the bodies being removed from the scene etc.

Local news reporting on trials will give the name of the accused, his/her area of residence but not the house number.

Parliament does have what is called a "DA Notice" [formerly "Schedule D Notice"] such that it can impose news blackouts.

The names of the accused and witnesses can be used in reporting with some exceptions [rape victims for instance].

It is unknown how widespread D Notices are because the procedure excludes it's own reporting too.