BINGO. You should send that comment to the editor of the Winston-Salem Journal.
Now I think I get it...
"Wiseman's identification lifted a veil of secrecy a week after a Forsyth District Court judge issued a sweeping gag order on the case that prevented the disclosure of the name of the accused, her employment status and the school where she taught. Judge Lisa Menefee, who signed the gag order last Friday, signed another order yesterday allowing documents to be unsealed. Her actions came hours after the Winston-Salem Journal filed a motion asking the N.C. Court of Appeals to overturn the protective order.(excerpt)
Menefee and Tom Keith, the Forsyth County district attorney, said that the appeal did not factor into the decision to overturn the gag order. Menefee declined to say why she revoked the order, and Keith said that it was no longer needed to protect the investigation.
Keith said he wanted to protect the case that he was trying to build. He said he knew that the case would lead to intense media coverage that would discourage witnesses from coming forward.
Also, the investigating officer, who specializes in investigating sex offenses, was tied up in a trial, he said.
"I'm not ready to turn over the prosecution of criminals in this county to the newspaper," Keith said, calling the order a "slight inconvenience" to the news media.
"I don't think the First Amendment trumps everything," Keith said.
Hugh Stevens, an attorney for the Journal, said that it is still unclear to him why the protective order, which the Journal's lawsuit called "manifestly unconstitutional," was written and why it was then rescinded.
"Obviously, we're certainly pleased that the judge has vacated her order, which we viewed as totally improper. But it's not clear why she did that," Stevens said.
Both school officials and Winston-Salem police said they did not request the gag order.
"There's a little bit of an implication ... that we were out there lobbying, cajoling," said Don Martin. the superintendent of the school system. "We didn't know that records could be sealed, quite frankly. That was on the DA's side, and of course there is an attorney for the alleged guilty party here."
Police were preparing a news release about the case when the protective order was issued, said Capt. Bill Cobb, a police spokesman. "We were not the petitioners on that (order)," he said.