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NZ Judge Bans Online Publishing of Accuseds' Names
The Master Moose writes "A judge in New Zealand has banned the press from reporting online the names of two men accused of murder. The names of the men will be allowed to be reported in print as well as through Television and Radio broadcast. It would seem he has taken this step to prevent someone 'googling' these peoples names in the future and finding them linked to a crime if found innocent."
Folks might be crying censorship. Of course it's a band-aid to the sensationalism - but got any better ideas? The accusations will be on front pages of tabloids since MURDER SELLS. If these guys get cleared as not guilty, it will be on page 10 as a tiny note, if even that. Guess which one Google catches?
Other option might be that everyone who makes news about the accusations should make similar headlines of the end of trial regardless of whether they were convicted or not...
My guess is that this is a experiment by the Judge in question to see what difference (if any) the ban will make (this is a high profile case in NZ).
Here, in Florida, in Hillsborough County, the sheriff's office has on their website an arrest inquiry page, which lists all people who've been arrested along with their photo. Now, my brother has been arrested, and never convicted of anything, and in spite of this, it's now nearly impossible for him to get a low-wage job. People, employers, they equate being arrested for something with guilt, not with a false accusation or an amateur cop. It doesn't really matter if other people post the info online, its the official record employers will look at. Arrest and charge records OUGHT NOT be public, they harm the innocent and have no effect on the guilty (because their conviction record would be there anyway). Our system is ruined.
Indeed, it's actually quite interesting - there was a supression order against the "Uruowea 17" and originally names could NOT have been published. (As far as I can tell, faces still cannot be in those cases.)
What was weird was that I was actually planning to hire Rongomai Bailey as a cameraman - because of the supression order, I made the decision to hire him AFTER he was arrested but before the suppresion order on his name was lifted.
Although I believe him to be absolutely, 100% innocent of all charges, I consider myself lucky (because I'm living in the oh-so-free U.S.,) that he never came on the payroll. You end up with all sorts of problems when the T-word is bandied around.
I used to work for NetQoS. I no longer do, but want to keep the excellent karma attached to this account.
You can't control Internet by gagging a few editors because the Internet is full of normal people blogging away about the things that interest them.
Are your "normal people" also too stupid to understand why the judge's preference in this case might be guided by a well-informed sense of justice, and to acknowledge that he might actually be right? Do you really believe that everyone's right to know everything (whether or not it is actually true, and regardless of the practical implications) is far more important than an innocent person's right not to be tarnished for life for something they did not do?
I, for one, am very glad that someone intimately familiar with both the justice system and the real world implications of the Internet has stopped to think about the balance between public oversight of the judicial system and open government on the one hand, and a private citizen's rights to privacy and due process on the other. Personally, I'm 100% with the judge on this one.
If this doesn't work voluntarily, it may become necessary to anonymize court proceedings, so the defendant, witnesses, etc. are identified only by artificial names until the conclusion of a case (and the real names never released by the court in the event that the defendant is found not guilty). Frankly, I'd prefer that anyway, since I think it better serves the interests of justice while still keeping courts open and subject to a healthy level of oversight, but whether it is reasonable for a judge to start ordering this sort of thing unilaterally to make a point is a different question. Indeed, the extent of a lone judge's powers in cases like this, and to which they can or should lobby government for changes in the legal framework where their experience indicates it would be helpful, are all interesting questions.
Anyway, more power to this judge. If nothing else, his actions will raise important philosophical and ethical questions that are long overdue being addressed in the Internet age.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.