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Originally Posted by WillyPete
True.
When they had the trial for the guy that killed the two schoolgirls,my friend at the BBC hinted that the accused had a history of such actions but the entire media industry agreed to not broadcast any of this for fear of jeapordising the judicial process.
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Not so much that they agreed not to, more that it was highly illegal for them to do so. You could tell that all the papers had tons of background info on Huntley because as soon as his verdict was in, they ran with all the juicy stuff they couldn't use before. And this stuff is heavily enforced. If the BBC were to be found in contempt too many times, chances are their charter would be gone.
I get the impression it's not so heavily enforced in America... My gut instinct in reading coverage of the Scott Peterson case is that there's no way he could have had a fair trial. They moved the trial, big deal, the story was EVERYWHERE. Either it's not enforced, or US news outlets take the enormous fines on the chin. Presumably they can absorb them because all their news outlets are owned by a handful of corporations. It's getting that way here, but not to the same degree.