Thanks for chiming in. This comment was really helpful.

The difference in the Bernardo case is that in Canada persons detained or charged with an offence are innocent until proven guilty. I'd wager that reporting on a case against a judge's orders creates the presumption of guilt, counter to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is hardcoded into our law here, whereas it is not in the United States where it is inferred.

Frankly that case seems perfectly rational to me, as it protects the innocent who might be smeared and have their lives ruined by such reporting, for the price of denying us the intrigue and scandal of those kinds of cases -- but I was too young to remember the Bernardo case itself.

Here is the key difference.

The presumption in Canada is that there is a balance to be found between different kinds of rights, and the government can be trusted to do a reasonable job of finding it. I remember feeling that way, and wondering how a rational person could see it otherwise.

The presumption in the USA is that government is fundamentally untrustworthy and our enumerated rights exist as a protection against the government. While we may feel for the person who gets smeared by public rumor, we are scared of giving judges power to casually order the media around. This becomes in a sense a self-fulfilling prophecy. We hold our government to low standards, and our government fails to achieve them, which confirms the low opinion that we have of our government.

In the case of high profile cases, the Canadian approach is to say that the media can't report. Jurors show up each day, hear evidence, and go home. Then eventually they make a decision. The US approach is to select a jury that has not yet been biased by the case, and then put them in a hotel with no access to the media.

The controversy in the Bernardo case was because Canadian jurors could go home, turn on the TV, and hear an American station reporting on allegations that might or might not have enough evidence behind them to show up in court. So Canadians wanted American media to stop irresponsibly reporting on it. But how would YOU feel if another country wanted Canadian companies to follow THEIR laws? Yeah, that's exactly how Americans felt about the Canadian complaints.

>I remember feeling that way, and wondering how a rational person could see it otherwise.

Because history has proven time and time again that government can not, and should not be trusted.

>The presumption in the USA is that government is fundamentally untrustworthy and our enumerated rights exist as a protection against the government.

The presumption in the USA is that rights are not enumerated at all, we do not have enumerated rights. The Bill of rights is not designed or intended to list all of the rights a person has.

The constitution is a document outlining what government can do, if the constitution does not give the government the authority, the government is prohibited from acting.

This is almost the exact opposite of however other nations government is authorized where the government is giving total power and then some government powers are prohibited or limited.

I do not see how any rational person would want to give government near unlimited power.

If you read more carefully, you'd have realized that you're about 25 years late to express your point of view to me..but thank you anyways for presenting standard American dogma. Which I am quite familiar with, and I know the history, legal theory, and legal practice far better than most Americans. Possibly better than you do.

And no, the USA does not say that rights are limited to the ones enumerated in the Constitution. However the ones enumerated in the Constitution do have special legal status.

Thanks for the context. That's a tough one. Of course there is no stopping Americans from doing what they want in this case, especially pursuing information.

I honestly have no immediate answers for situations like this. Our current frameworks don't allow for it.

Frankly, I support the idea of global democratic bodies working on issues like this for willing members. But I'm a natural born humanist, so I'm extremely biased!

In the US there is definitely concern that reporting can bias a jury pool such that they no longer presume the innocence of the accused. Freedom of Speech and the presumption of innocence until guilt has been proven are not considered to be mutually incompatible, and the issue is generally resolved during jury selection.

A large difference between the US and many jurisdictions is the extreme aversion to prior restraint.

In the US it's perfectly possible to go after someone for publishing/saying something, if in doing so they violated a law (for example, if they deliberately falsely described someone as a criminal), and recover damages and possibly an injunction against them preventing further harm to you.

However, it is designed to be as difficult as humanly possible -- verging on impossible -- to prevent someone from speaking/publishing in the first place. Ordering something never to be said or published at all (rather than allowing damages to be recovered after the fact) is prior restraint, and the US legal system is incredibly hostile to that.

So although there are times when it's permitted in the US, they're rare and the standard which must be cleared is very high. Which in turn leads to people from the US being surprised at the (from our perspective) seemingly casual way that prior restraints on speech are handed out in other countries.