Comment by jampekka
3 days ago
The court proceedings and decisions are public and can be followed on site and the documents can be acquired by anyone. This is indeed important for transparency and accountability of the system.
However the proceedings aren't streamed and the documents aren't online. Some cases can be published online (e.g. supreme court ones) but with identifying information redacted. I think this is good.
The policy is voluntary by the press, not a law. Although in some cases publishing such information could be deemed violation of privacy if it's not deemed of public importance. And compiling databases of the personally identifying information could be illegal.
Even worse is that if you google the poor blokes name they had the paparazzi out taking courthouse photos.
The gutter press in Australia have a field day at peoples expense.
Plenty of precedent of throwing high profile court cases too (hard to find unbiased jurors etc). Lately there's been a number of important cases being declared mistrials.
It always seemed that more often than not the people are innocent when gossip rags dox them pre-trial or during a trial.