Everybody's probably familiar with the sad story of Tori Stafford, the young girl from Woodstock, Ontario who was abducted and killed last year.
Recently, some new detail has apparently come to light but the judge has imposed a publication ban meaning no Canadian media can cover this aspect of the trial.
The traditional media aren't happy about this and I can't say I blame them.
dissemination of information revealed in open court is impractical.
Indeed, placing limits on traditional, responsible media may be
counterproductive, as the only information available to the public will
be incomplete and rife with speculation and rumour.
As the Globe & Mail says, all a publication ban does is give free reign for anyone with an Internet connection to add their speculation to the mix (hi! 
) or, with a couple carefully chosen keywords, even profit from the lurid interest. Some Canadian media outlets are doing the best they can to work within the ban, hypothetically musing their way through their reports.
A publication ban is doubly useless in the Internet age when a blogger OR a news outlet just across the US border in Buffalo or Cleveland could publish the details without any sanction as was frequently the case during the Karla Homolka trial.
Publication bans are even more useless in less sensationalistic circumstances. In the past, media have been prevented from revealing national election results from the east until polls have closed in the west. But again, anybody with an Internet connection and a modicum of technical knowledge could find out what was going on before going to cast their vote…as if enough people would ever be paying enough attention or change their vote significantly if they *did* see results for it to make a difference.
Finally, just as with the attention drawn by banned books pushing the questionable item to the top of the bestseller lists, a publication ban only serves to shine a light on information that would've likely made little more than a ripple otherwise.
From the Toronto Star article I already linked to above:
and disgustingness. Really, I don’t understand how they’ll manage to
enforce hush-hushness. I’ve been going on Facebook all day to see if
anybody has posted anything about it. That’s so easy to do now, just put
up an anonymous page and say what you like. How are they going to stop
that? It’s impossible to keep secrets in this day and age.”
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