Why a New Yorker Story on a Notorious Murder Case Is Blocked in Britain | Hacker News Reader

Why a New Yorker Story on a Notorious Murder Case Is Blocked in Britain

nytimes.com

47 pointsjjgreen45 comments

I'm actually more sympathetic than, I suspect, most people here to the argument that judicial integrity requires a certain curtailing of press freedom while the case is in progress. I wouldn't want it for my country, and I think it's a bad idea, but I can at least understand the motivation and if someone laid out a principled defense of it, I'd give them a chance to win me over.

But the asymmetry of the UK case makes this completely indefensible, even giving that intellectual charity to prior restraint. The British tabloids get to scream in huge fonts on their front pages that this person is a murderer, but anyone trying to make a case the other way gets muzzled and threatened with prison time? No, no fucking way. Either muzzle all the press related to this case or none of it.

If I understand correctly, in principle there isn't an asymmetry based on point of view, only on time.

If the New Yorker had been able to publish their story in the days immediately following the trial, it wouldn't have been blocked.

Though the New Yorker story itself does contain claims that more recently there has been an asymmetry based on point of view, at least in some cases of self-censorship.

Agreed. UK tabloids are an absolute blight. I wouldn't generally advocate for the censorship of reporting on such a case, but if it's going to happen, then tabloid 'newspapers' would be at the top of the list of organisations to restrict.

> absolute blight

Not absolute. They have exposed plenty of truths over the decades. A blight, for sure.

True...but telling which of their "truths" are actually true can be truly difficult.

This seems to be a tragic tale of an overworked and understaffed hospital with a terrible track record treating patients with delicate conditions pinning the blame on the young nurse who was just picking up more shifts so she could save for a house.

If you flip a coin a hundred times there’s going to be a run of seven heads somewhere in the list. It’ll look like a pattern but it’s not. Flip it around and assume she had tried to orchestrate the deaths. There’s no coherent story about how she could, and more importantly why she would.

She happened to be present at a lot of deaths. But there were a lot of deaths to be present for and she was there more often because she took more shifts. I bet a statistical analysis of her increased likelihood of being present for a death is directly proportional to the number of extra shifts she took.

No, she’s a convicted serial killer. She was present 25 times when an incident occurred, the next closest person was 8 times (and that was a consultant doctor). The evidence clearly shows these babies were murdered and did not die by natural causes (eg injected with air)

Yeah, that's just the nature of work right now. Get close enough to see how the sausage is being made, and someone will freak out and pin it on you as a means to cover their ass. I wouldn't be surprised if she made the fatal mistake of voicing concern.

Bureaucratic ass-covering is basically the sine qua non of corporations and LLCs. And surprise surprise, as each lower organizational layer successively realized they'd be the ones left holding the bag, that dynamic has moved to even those who are supposed to be doing the work. "Shit rolls downhill" and all that, and in a hospital the patients are at the bottom of the hill.

That's how the new yorker story presented it, yes, but there is good reason to doubt this sequence of events.

Interesting, could you share some? I just read the New Yorker article in detail, and it did seem like a lot of circumstantial evidence and nothing direct. It reads eerily like a misunderstanding of statistics and an old guy (the main pediatrics expert) making up conjectures and presenting them as evidence.

But then I don't know much about the case so I can't be sure. Would be great to hear the counterpoints.

I don't know either, I'm just making a reliable statement about any piece of journalism.

Going from "good reason" to "because journalism" is a totally airheaded take.

Your original comment presented it as if you'd come up with it or evaluated it yourself, rather than merely repeating a biased story someone else wrote. This seems far more dishonest than anything I did.

Right, that's the whole problem with this case -- that really both options are possible. It was up to the jury to decide on the evidence presented to them and they decided to find guilt in the Defendant.

Obviously, in any case, if the evidence presented (especially in a closely-balanced case like this) isn't the whole picture (or a biased picture), then the jury will always be working at a disadvantage. It's defense counsel's job to make sure any exculpatory evidence is presented.

For example...

https://archive.ph/dNID5

And the New Yorker piece in question: https://archive.ph/ulZsu

Rights in the USA are ultimately protected by a written constitution. In the UK we have no constitution we rely on an independent judiciary. They frequently tell the government no you can't do that. Judges while not perfect are respected. And we all agree that during a trial we all shut up and leave it to be done properly. To be clear if anyone from the New Yorker or elsewhere feels they have genuine evidence to contribute they can approach the defense barrister and ask for it to be included. But they will have to make the effort for it to be done properly and seriously. There is a lot that could be better in the UK justice system but I don't object to the actual principle being enforced here. When the trial is done the media will be rightly free to hold it to account.

But what happens if you apply this argument to other situations?

For example, suppose you discover a politician is taking bribes. In the UK there is a formal process by which the police can investigate and then bring a case if the evidence is substantive. By your argument here, it would be okay if the government prevented you from publishing the bribery claims in a newspaper. After all, if someone “feels they have genuine evidence [of bribery] to contribute they can approach the [police] and ask for it to be included”. No need for a free press at all.

No, that only applies (in E+W) while a trial is live, or in Scotland from the police investigation being live, to end of investigation and/or trial.

If there is no police investigation (Scotland) nor trial (either country), the you can publish what you want. However the normal rules for defamation apply, but there is no prior restraint absent the aforementioned legal processes being live.

So if you want to publish about a politician allegedly taking bribes, then have at it. If you can prove its truth, you have a defense to any subsequent defamation (Scotland) or libel (England) case.

> In the UK we have no constitution we rely on an independent judiciary.

And we see how much weaker that system is. The country and similar countries like Australia are significantly less free as a result.

Works where archive.ph is blocked:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240516231919if_/https://www.ny...

New Yorker story:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240518150700if_/https://www.ne...

This is malicious compliance and I love it. Basically, in Britain it's illegal for them to report on this, so they just published it everywhere else instead.

You're saying that you love the integrity of the legal system being jeopardised and juries being interfered with?

The legal system of the UK ends at their border. They don't get to control what I see, hear or say. This is a fact to be celebrated indeed.

I'd go further and say that the geoblocking by the New Yorker is excessive. If the UK doesn't want its population accessing what is freely visible in the rest of the world, it should institute a firewall itself.

Don't suggest such a thing. I'm quite confident that plenty of the population would be perfectly happy with that so long as there was an exception for internet shopping and that there are plenty of politicians who would do their best to put a positive spin on it.

You'll be fine, it would be subcontracted out to Capita or the like who would make a pig's ear of the project but come in at 5 times the original budget; then it would be cancelled 2 months before completion and the minister responsible would get a job on the board.

I've been living outside the UK for so long I'd forgotten about Capita! Long live Capita! :-)

"outsourcing companies" exist?

So, should the UK government read every newspaper before it is published, every webpage that gets loaded inside the UK, every tweet viewed in the UK, etc. to check whether it deems it acceptable for UK citizens to see it?

If the government had the tech to do that it would be awfully easy to misuse it.

I don't think they have any desire to control what you see, because you're not going to be on the jury in her next trial.

Then, since I'm reading this in the UK, that's illegal?

It's very hard to argue that a story like this is really getting in the way of the integrity of the legal system.

I don't know whether the problem is that the judge doesn't have the discretion to lift reporting restrictions in this case, or that the judge is failing to exercise that discretion.

But it's very silly that there was a window after the original case where reporting was allowed (and therefore a great was deal written based on the decision that she was guilty, with as much prejudice to a future jury as you like), and then they closed the window again ahead of the new case.

The UK legal system? Integrity?

Best joke I've heard all week.

This is a system notoriously-known for railroading anyone.

They could sequester juries if that were a concern for them.

In cases such as this, sure.

This is why a decentralized internet is so important.

Ultimately, governments should not be able to decide which sites or content are OK for citizens to visit.

Britain is one of the most law restrictive countries in Europe. Think Russia and China levels.

Brit here. Wat?

Except more people are prosecuted in UK. Compare stats how many get jail for "hate speach" in UK and for criticism of war in Russia!

Expat Brit here. I'm not fond of old blighty, but this is nonsense. There's plenty wrong in the UK, but it's not an oppressive state.

It's lacking in a lot of freedoms though. It might not be at China or Russia levels but it's getting further from other first world countries also.

As the story is available in print or via the New Yorker app, the explanation that the story can't be published in the UK seems incomplete.

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