[Ammi]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

No, but like I was saying (...in the entirety of the rest of my post...) "the press" is a dying medium and "news" (gossip, hear say, whatever you might call it) now gets around by a multitude of other means... so whether or not people are named in the press, people know who it is anyway. Whether or not it's in the papers is sort of moot, if it's all over social networking and freely available with a quick google search. I used the example of the "un-named Helen Wood punter from a BBC drama", who can't be named but we all know who it is. Another would be Rolf Harris, who was identified online months before his name was released, in the press he was being listed as "a famous person of a certain age". Everyone knew it was Rolf.

My point is that this would be all over the internet whether or not it was "allowed" to be in the printed press, and that already, a large number of people get most of their knowledge of world events online. As the generations roll on (easily within the next two), the printed press will be all but obsolete anyway. And you can't keep this sort of thing out of the "online grape vine" without a huge and unprecedented effort to "censor the internet". Which would be fundamentally damaging, for everyone.

...yeah I agree that it wouldn't stop internet speculation etc the same as if it was compared to a local new story and people would speculate and indeed some would know who that person was/and gossip etc.. but that person still wouldn't be allowed to be officially named... and why should anyone famous/in the public eye.. have any lesser rights..because as Liv said, we are all equal in the eyes of the law and should be treated as such and that's far from being censorship, surely it's the exact opposite in a way...I just don't think that we can say...oh well, they would be known anyway..and that be a reason for it being allowed for their names to be published when charges haven't even been brought against them...