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.