Editor’s note: This article was originally published in July 2022.
News stories about arrests and legal issues in the United Kingdom are different from the other sorts of articles you will find on The Athletic. They are often incredibly short, for example, and conspicuously light on detail. They also generally have the comments turned off.
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We understand this can be confusing. And we understand you might have questions — we often hear from readers who email us or reach our writers on social media. We can’t always reply to everyone, so we want to explain why we write these stories in the way that we do.
The reality of sports is that it is very difficult for anything to remain confidential, particularly in the era of social media. But there are laws in the United Kingdom on what we can and cannot report. These laws can perhaps seem anachronistic, and they are very different from laws that apply to stories reported in the United States. But it is essential that responsible publishers, including The Athletic, abide by them.
This is why we report these stories in the way that we do.
Why does The Athletic not name arrested players?
We never “decide” not to name an arrested person — we are not legally able to.
In the United Kingdom, arrested suspects have the right to privacy until the police see fit to charge them. That is because being charged is the point in the legal process when the courts have decided there is enough substance to the allegations to warrant linking someone to them.
Before that, the courts consider there is no “public interest” in knowing what someone is being investigated for or has been arrested over.
This is different to how the rules work in the United States, which has quite understandably confused some of our readers on both sides of the pond. We will come on to that in more detail later.
So when do you name them?
When it is legally permissible for us to do so. That is usually when the individual has been charged.
On rare occasions, it is legally OK to name someone before they are charged — for example, if they themselves have spoken out about the situation or if their arrest was highly public.
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But otherwise, naming an individual before they are charged is legally and ethically irresponsible.
What about if a case is dropped?
When a case is dropped without anyone being charged, the matter is still deemed private.
It would only not be if the person was charged, or if they identify themselves.
Why have I seen a name repeatedly mentioned on social media or in other publications?
Let’s start with social media.
You do not have to spend long on social media to find people speculating over which individual may or may not have been arrested.
But anybody who names an individual in relation to a criminal investigation risks breaking the law.
Individuals who are being investigated or who have been arrested almost always have a right to privacy up until the moment they are charged with an offence — and this does not only apply to media organisations like The Athletic.
Social media users can also be sued for breaches of privacy, although identifying the person behind the profile is often far more difficult than holding a media company to account.
Other publications may handle stories differently than The Athletic for different reasons. The most common is because they are located in a different jurisdiction, so are bound by completely different laws.
Why do you provide some details but not others?
When we are not allowed to identify someone for legal reasons, we take great care not to do so.
That applies not just to those who have been arrested. It also applies to victims of sexual offences, for example, as well as children involved in court cases. In these instances, we do all we can to protect that right to anonymity.
But there are still some general, non-identifying details that we can responsibly reveal without identifying someone.
Unhelpfully, there is no list of what is and what is not allowed, which explains why rival news organisations covering the same story can end up with subtly different reports with different details.
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That is why a 26-year-old Premier League footballer arrested in Birmingham on suspicion of sexual assault, to use a purely hypothetical example, might be described as a footballer in his “mid-20s” arrested in the Midlands.
Otherwise, our reporting could result not just in an invasion of the arrested player’s privacy, but also in potentially libellous speculation around all other 26-year-old Premier League footballers who frequent Birmingham — which would likely be a fairly small number.
Why do you turn comments off?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions on social media when we publish a story that does not offer our subscribers the opportunity to comment.
There are a few different reasons. As a responsible publisher, we will always turn comments off on stories where what we can report is restricted, out of respect to the individuals involved.
We will also turn comments off on stories that involve a live legal trial.
That is because commenters may inadvertently identify people that they shouldn’t. Or they might comment about whether or not someone facing a trial is guilty or not, which would be a breach of the UK’s contempt laws, potentially jeopardising a trial through the publication of prejudicial information.
At its most serious, contempt can even lead to an entire trial collapsing.
And in the UK, those who complain of certain sexual offences are entitled to anonymity for life — regardless of the outcome of any police investigation — unless they choose to waive their identity.
Why is your US coverage often so different from your reporting on UK football?
This is a very good question. At The Athletic, we are fortunate to have a truly international audience, with our readership often split evenly between the UK and the US.
But libel, privacy and contempt of court rules are all very different in the US to the UK. That often means stories that we publish in the UK that involve the UK legal system are subject to different legal rules.
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The clearest example of that is coverage of arrests. In the US, arrests are a matter of public record. This means individuals can be identified from the moment they are arrested.
As explained in more detail above, this is not the case in the UK.
US laws naturally apply to UK citizens when in the country — and vice versa.
That is why news stories concerning matters of US law may seem to have far more detail than news stories published in the UK. It is nothing to do with a different set of editorial standards, instead an entirely different legal framework.
(Photo: Nicolo Campo/LightRocket via Getty Images)
