Hacker News Reader

Comment by orangeoxidation | Hacker News Reader

Publishing the names of suspects and accused is just a bad practice.

The court of public opinion knows no presumption of innocence and can ruin the life of someone acquitted easily.

If they have to name the name they should wait until after conviction.

That's how it's done in Norway and a bunch of other European countries, though the media usually don't even name convicted people unless there's major reasons/interest.

Also interesting, and quite sad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQSPBQjaWhI

The way it’s been explained to me is that if a journalist is going to name an accused, they should follow the case and publish the outcome as well.

For minor things, that’s not worth their time so they won’t name them.

Not a 100% practice, but I guess that’s what they teach in school.

The public opinion is a court that almost never acquits and that only serves life-term sentences

Yes, but secret trials don’t have a great history either. At its best, the media can prevent miscarriages of justice and make sure the government follows proper procedure.

There's a wide range between secret trials and not publishing peoples name in national media.

An approach used in many contexts is to make the information accessible but put limitations on publication whether permanently or only until a conviction is made, so that people with an interest in a case can investigate while recognising mistakes are made.

[another approach is various levels of barriers to make access inconvenient, e.g. forcing you to go to an office to look up records rather than making them easily searchable; or for tax information in Norway: the tax information is public, but unless you're media - who get a copy - your name will be accessible to the person you looked up]

America collectively has a pretty short attention span.

That would be fair for radio or such.

In the internet age it can heavily damage or ruin things like your job and dating prospects permanently.

I dunno, it's tricky. Should it really be unlawful to report on the suspects identity if the government doesn't reveal the name of a suspect but the journalist(s) are able to figure it out by interviewing witnesses? Also tricky needle to thread habeas corpus while trying to protect the accused.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com