Well it depends on which part of the British press you read - it's not a homogeneous entity. The BBC (original article) and the Guardian [0] didn't name them at any point. Some of the tabloid press did, including names and photos of their friends, families and employer. (I won't link to the naming articles because that would of course name them!). At least one of the major online papers that did name them has at least said that they have been released without charge (in the process calling them 'the accused'), but still with a mass of personal details.

Really sad - I'm guessing that as drone users they will now receive the inevitable nut-job drone hatred.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/23/gatwick-dron...

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist, thank God! the British journalist.

But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to."

-- https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Humbert_Wolfe , 1930

The lack of ethics is definitely imposed from the top, by people like Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan.

Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-American?

The owner of News International, Fox etc? Yes.

The Times, The Telegraph, The Sun and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling have already labelled any culprits as 'eco-warriors' and that was even before these two were arrested and then released. https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/12/21/comment-why-it-s-too-soo...

Complete speculation, but I think most likely is local residents who oppose expansion of the airport.

Ah, the perfect protest. Where no one knows what you're protesting!

What is the aim of any protest? Is it to get publicity or to make an actual impact? Might environmental activists be fed up with the limited effect getting in the news brings, and like the yellow vests over the channel, prefer actual effects? "The revolution will not be televised" for the 21st century.

Id like that to be the case as it's more interesting, but in this case I suspect a couple of pranksters having a laugh amongst themselves.

They recruit them from the alumni of the same boarding schools they went to.

I wish I was joking.

This satirist wrote a scathing lookback of 2018, and British journalists didn't get a free pass either. Writing about Khashoggi, he says:

Perhaps the saddest part of this whole business is knowing that there are so few British journalists committed enough to get murdered: you could silence most just by breaking the fingers they use to do select all, copy, paste. Nobody’s going to flay you to death just for barking offers of money through the letterboxes of recently bereaved parents, or trawling for offensive tweets with your free hand. Of course, there are a lot of good journalists. Perhaps journalist is now just too broad a term, in much the way the word actor encompasses everyone from Meryl Streep to Sooty.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/dec/22/frankie-boy...

It's why there's so much outrage in America when differences between the verdict of public opinion and the verdict of the court happen.

This is not a uniquely British phenomenon.