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Notes -
Your hypothetical didn't actually mention anything about a court case in which a judge could issue a gag order... I assume the idea is supposed to be that the court case is underway at the same time it's in the newspapers, and the protagonist will eventually be found innocent, but only after their reputation has taken a hit, and the reputational hit either won't be reversed by alter being found innocent, or too much financial damage will already have been done by then?
I guess what I would say is that 1. that sees like a really narrow case (most cases don't go to newspapers while they're happening, most prospective buyers probably aren't reading the local newspaper or googling your name, most rape accusations don't go to trial anyway, there has to be a big financial thing happening in between the time of the newspaper article and the time of the not-guilty verdict, etc), which doesn't make it irrelevant but means it should have less influence over how we design policy than the median case, and 2. I would hope a judge in that case wouldn't issue a blanket gag order, it seems like you could say a lot to protect your reputation without crossing the line on a conservative gag order, and as OP states gag orders are really quite rare anyway, and 3. yeah, there may have to be some trade-offs between corner-cases like this and making the system work in the median case.
That said, yeah, I take your point that sometimes you want to defend yourself in the court of public opinion at the same time you are defending yourself in actual court, and this creates a genuine conflict of interests between protecting the court proceedings and protecting normal speech-based liberty.
I think my intuition on this mostly falls on the side of 'being a defendant in a trial sucks in a lot of ways, especially if they're keeping you in jail during the trial or crippling your family with charges related to getting out on bond, so this isn't an extraordinary new type of burden compared to all the other ones. I'm open to the idea that we should reform the system to make it less damaging to defendants who have not been convicted yet, but if we are deciding to care about that then these super-rich and powerful guys worrying about their reputations are way down on my list under a lot of other defendants who need the help more urgently.'
I am not against reforming the system and limiting punishment by process. Things like releasing mugshots do damage people so I would have no problem with limiting releases if a process isn’t followed. Maybe you need a grand jury to review the evidence and declare something like the accused crime represents a significant threat to society before trial.
In the case of Trump it does seem reasonable that the process itself could harm his election chances, even moreso if he wasn’t Trump who doesn’t mind breaking norms and speaking out. He has a rational argument that the process harms his ability to run for office so I believe he meets your standard.
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