Is a virtual lynching a real lynching? We aren't the jury, and the judge wisely gagged the real participants. Although in today's information age, it appears to be not enough to protect the jury pool.
'Cept that gag was after the "pervert Westerfield pedophile kid killer" horse was out of the barn, and the camel's nose of the full ramifications of the VD sex and drugs was hardly in the tent.
So the effect of the gag was (perhaps) to hold the harm on Westerfield while keeping it from the VD's.