TV Report Lacks Defendant's ID

CK - Washington.   May German media publish the names of criminal defendants in their court reports? That is the central issue in the matter 1 BvQ 46/08, involving media concern N24 and the presiding judge of the Oldenburg court, addressed by the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on November 27, 2008. The Karlsruhe court declined to issue a TRO in favor of N24 that challenged a lower court order disallowing media reports without an anonymized or pixelated identification of a defendant. The constitutional basis for the challenge is article 5 of the federal constitution, the guarantee of freedom of the press. That guarantee is subject to a …