Delphi Shows the True Crime Holes in Gag Orders

A Better Approach May Be More Transparency

By Jayson Blair, Alice LaCour and Brett Talley

If the past few years have taught us anything, it is that the judicial canons of ethics and gag orders are little more than an umbrella of the imagination, a porous illusion filled with numerous holes. While there was a time when gag orders and legal ethical rules were effective in restraining news coverage of cases, with the growth of true crime and the new media landscape, those times appear to be gone.

This new reality is presenting a challenge for judges, attorneys, defendants and victims’ families in high-profile cases, and justice. And it appears to be time to look for radical new solutions, one of which may, in fact, be leaning into transparency to ensure a level playing field for all parties to court cases in the interest of justice.

American democracy is rooted in the idea that our government will be transparent to the people. This is not an element that is emphasized as strongly in other countries, including fellow democracies like Canada or the United Kingdom. In American democracy, secrecy often meant to protect national security or the fairness of trials is an exception rather than the rule.

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