It can be frustrating when you read about a particularly shocking crime in the paper but the name of criminal is hidden.
If the crime happened in your area you might even know the person who did it.
But we may only refer to them as “a 40-year-old man” throughout the entire article.
Why is that?
Publications such as ours don’t take the decision to anonymise criminals lightly.
We feel that cases heard in open court, and the perpetrator of the crime, should be publicised for all to see.
But there are times when a publication has to remove any reference to a person’s identity in the report.
Otherwise, the publication can end up in deep trouble, and its journalists can even be prosecuted.
What is an identifying feature?
An identifying feature is anything that could lead someone in the person’s community to identify them.
This can of course be a name or picture, but also things like addresses or places of work. To not do so could be contempt of court.
Normally, anything that is said in open court can be reported without fear of prosecution.
But if a name is mentioned that the judge or judges rule must not be publicised, they will impose an order banning their identification in a report.
That’s called a Section 11 order, as provision to do so is laid out in Section 11 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981.
These can be imposed for a number of reasons, one of which could be if the person is vulnerable.
Publications cannot identify any child appearing in youth court by law.
Also, anyone who is the victim of a sexual offence is granted anonymity for life.
This begins at the point of reporting the crime, such as to a police officer or teacher.
As a result, a person connected to the victim in a sexual offence might be anonymised too.
Identifying them might inadvertently identify the victim, which is prohibited.
What happens when we don’t follow court orders?
If a publication identifies someone when doing so is banned by order or law, and no attempt is made to make amends, it can be prosecuted for contempt of court.
That carries an unlimited maximum fine for the publisher, because it has jeopardised and potentially damaged the English justice process.
If the publication identifies a victim of a sexual offence, the journalists involved can be subject to prosecution.
Take a recent case study when BBC Asian Network’s head of news was charged with naming a sexual offence victim in a live radio broadcast.
It is crucially important that we get anonymity right as a publication, both for the sake of the rule of law and our reporters.
So if you read an article but the person involved is not named, there’s probably a very good reason.