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re the hockey incident that was discussed here a few weeks ago, the player involved has been arrested for manslaughter. they haven't released his name yet, but there's no one else it could realistically be. just yesterday he was getting a standing ovation; life comes at you fast sometimes.
from a legal perspective, it looks like they'll argue for gross negligence, since your skates should never be that high intentionally, and he wasn't violently blind-side hip checked. it's unfortunate that the races of the players involved is turning online discussion about it into a shitshow.
Regardless of what happens in the legal case, that BBC article is a prime example of how the propaganda machine rolls. "A man has been arrested..." Literally no other references to this man. You can't make this stuff up.
Alternative explanation: The media faces potential liablity for naming suspects before formal charges are filed.
Let's be honest; that's total bullshit from hyper-risk-averse lawyers. Like, could there some day be a case somewhere that plausibly opens up some degree of legal liability? Possibly. This thing was on television. The guy had his name written on the back of his jersey, for the express purpose of identifying him. Their closest example of actual legal liability was one where they said he was charged, but he was not actually charged. Clearly, they're reporting an arrest and have confidence that an arrest was actually made. I cannot fathom how someone would construct any legal liability for them saying his name.
The article you link even goes on to say that news outlets actually do print names all the time, even though there is some scant vapor of possibly liability in an edge case somewhere. Sagan knows they wouldn't wrap themselves in the most hyper-risk-averse legal position if they thought it would promote their preferred politics. Would you make a prediction? After the police announce it officially, do you predict that they'll post a second article naming him or go back and alter this article? Or do you think they'll just wait and sit on it?
People who know more about UK law than you or I disagree with you
Edit >Clearly, they're reporting an arrest and have confidence that an arrest was actually made.
That's irrelevant. The law in the UK apparently draws the line at the point that charges are filed, not at the point of arrest.
There are literally no details in that article about the case in question or how wide-ranging the opinion in question is. Key language that could give an indication: "a person under criminal investigation has a reasonable expectation of privacy". This was on TV. His name was written on the back of his jersey so as to identify him publicly. He had received a standing ovation publicly, a public acknowledgement that everyone knows him. Many other articles named him at the time of the incident. You're going to need a hell of a lot more specifics than a broadly-worded summary article to say that this guy somehow has a reasonable expectation of privacy in the matter.
EDIT: You know enough about law, generally, to know better than to reason this poorly from such non-specific articles with glaringly obvious, gigantic gaps in their language.
Yes, this sort of thing is a little bit silly, but it is not really that unusual or unprecedented when UK journalism and UK law collide. I recall a decade ago, there was controversy about the use of injunctions and super-injunctions by the UK courts as essentially a tool to gag the press regarding the private lives of celebrities. To some extent these restrictions were a bad joke - everyone knew who they were about, because these injunctions did not restrict the ability of private citizens to talk on social media - and they did not apply at all to international media. And yet, the threat of being dragged into court and get rinsed for vast sums of money was very serious.
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