I'm actually more sympathetic than, I suspect, most people here to the argument that judicial integrity requires a certain curtailing of press freedom while the case is in progress. I wouldn't want it for my country, and I think it's a bad idea, but I can at least understand the motivation and if someone laid out a principled defense of it, I'd give them a chance to win me over.<p>But the <i>asymmetry</i> of the UK case makes this completely indefensible, even giving that intellectual charity to prior restraint. The British tabloids get to scream in huge fonts on their front pages that this person is a murderer, but anyone trying to make a case the other way gets muzzled and threatened with prison time? No, no fucking way. Either muzzle <i>all</i> the press related to this case or none of it.
This seems to be a tragic tale of an overworked and understaffed hospital with a terrible track record treating patients with delicate conditions pinning the blame on the young nurse who was just picking up more shifts so she could save for a house.<p>If you flip a coin a hundred times there’s going to be a run of seven heads somewhere in the list. It’ll look like a pattern but it’s not.
Flip it around and assume she had tried to orchestrate the deaths. There’s no coherent story about how she could, and more importantly why she would.<p>She happened to be present at a lot of deaths. But there were a lot of deaths to be present for and she was there more often because she took more shifts. I bet a statistical analysis of her increased likelihood of being present for a death is directly proportional to the number of extra shifts she took.
Rights in the USA are ultimately protected by a written constitution. In the UK we have no constitution we rely on an independent judiciary. They frequently tell the government no you can't do that. Judges while not perfect are respected. And we all agree that during a trial we all shut up and leave it to be done properly. To be clear if anyone from the New Yorker or elsewhere feels they have genuine evidence to contribute they can approach the defense barrister and ask for it to be included. But they will have to make the effort for it to be done properly and seriously. There is a lot that could be better in the UK justice system but I don't object to the actual principle being enforced here. When the trial is done the media will be rightly free to hold it to account.
Works where archive.ph is blocked:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240516231919if_/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/16/world/europe/new-yorker-story-murder-letby-britain.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20240516231919if_/https://www.ny...</a><p>New Yorker story:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20240518150700if_/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20240518150700if_/https://www.ne...</a>
This is malicious compliance and I love it. Basically, in Britain it's illegal for them to report on this, so they just published it everywhere else instead.
This is why a decentralized internet is so important.<p>Ultimately, governments should not be able to decide which sites or content are OK for citizens to visit.