It's Time to Chuck Those Prior Restraints

If you are wondering what all those rumors swirling around Prince Charles are about, you can find the answer here. The Straits Times is not bound by the court order which constrains the U.K. press from reporting details on the story. In the meantime, the tabloids in the U.K. adopted their familiar method of getting around court orders and threatened libel suits: "continually printing the same odd photograph of Prince Charles standing with another man in a field, without explaining why the photograph had any significance."

The growing media scandal shows how foolish the U.K.'s rules about prior restraints on speech are. In the age of the Internet, it's pretty easy to find out in other papers what the British papers can't publish. Anyone who knows how to use Google's news function can pretty quickly find the substance of the rumors.