Why comments are turned off on our articles about the Thomas Partey case

New York Times

6 days ago

News stories about arrests, charges 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 and conspicuously light on detail. They also generally have the reader comments function turned off.
This has been the case with recent stories The Athletic has published concerning Thomas Partey, the midfielder who left Arsenal when his contract expired at the end of June.
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On July 4, it was confirmed that he had been charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.
The Athletic has kept the comments off on Partey-related articles because of the risk of such posts breaching the United Kingdom's contempt laws, potentially jeopardising a trial through the publication of prejudicial information.
Contempt can even lead to an entire trial collapsing.
We understand this can be confusing and even frustrating. And we understand you might have questions — we often hear from readers who email us or reach our writers on social media. And, recently, there have been comments about Partey made under articles not related to the case.
So we want to explain why we write these stories in the way we do and why comments are left off.
These laws can perhaps seem anachronistic, and they are 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.
We never 'decide' not to name an arrested person — often, we are not legally able to.
In the UK, arrested suspects are presumed to 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 police or Crown Prosecution Service have decided there is enough substance to the allegations to warrant linking someone to them.
This is what happened to Partey on July 4, when he was charged with five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault.
Before that, the courts generally 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 to that in more detail later.
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.
But otherwise, naming an individual before they are charged is legally and ethically irresponsible.
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.
This is one of the most commonly-asked questions on social media — and in the comment sections of unrelated articles — 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.
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We will also turn comments off on stories that involve a live legal trial, such as that involving Partey.
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 and could lead to the 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 anonymity.
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 U.S.
But libel, privacy and contempt of court rules are all very different in the U.S. to the UK. That often means stories that we publish that involve the UK legal system are subject to different legal rules.
The clearest example of that is coverage of arrests. In the U.S., 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.
U.S. laws naturally apply to UK citizens when in the United States — and vice versa.
That is why news stories concerning matters of U.S. 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.