This is how journalists see it (we are not journalists; we are historians):
https://ethics.journalists.org/topics/w ... formation/
When should the names of people in the news be withheld?
[...]
Breaking news
News organizations that cover breaking news sometimes have the names of victims of crimes, accidents or disasters before authorities have notified their families. You might have names from neighbors, witnesses or even officials.
One position in such cases would be to withhold the names until authorities have released them. Another position would be to publish names as soon as you have them verified. A middle position might be to wait until authorities have released names in most cases, but make exceptions if a person is prominent, if authorities appear to be delaying release of names for no good reason, or if you learn from family that the closest relatives have been notified.
Factors to consider in deciding your position in these cases are newsworthiness, the impact of reporting a death incorrectly if your sources are wrong and whether you would want to learn of a loved one’s death through the media.
The authorities are neither journalists or historians. The authorities in question are in fact the lawgivers, and specifically the police.
The buck stops with them. If they had an automatic restraining order on such info, out of moral grounds implemented in the law, which could be argued there perhaps ought to be, the problem would disappear, altogether. It would be up to the families of the victims to release the information, or make their own memorials, public or otherwise. The law (or applied legislation) in this case inverts ethics, as they are obliged to release the information because of "public interest". The only ones protected by that concept are the media, who profit from it.
Whose decision to name names?
The decision to name people involved in certain situations is sometimes controlled by law, but more often by societal conventions. In some cases, journalists may even take a calculated risk in terms of the law if they believe that identifying someone is clearly to the public’s benefit.
It is interesting to consider the impact of the EU right to privacy convention and how that is affecting the freedom of expression in journalism. The other idea gaining ground in Europe especially is the “right to be forgotten.” How will that mesh with a permanent, online, easily accessible journalism?
It obviously won't, because societal conventions are different. If you doubt that, try taking a sledgehammer to the Mille Miglia Memorial, and see what happens. But it's supposedly gaining ground, even though there has never been a request to remove or anonymize information from the mmorg database? I didn't get that memo. I in fact don't believe it. There is to me a difference between the right of anonymity and the right to be forgotten, namely that the former applies to the living, and the latter the dead, but that is not necessarily the case.
https://gdpr-info.eu/issues/right-to-be-forgotten/
That is EU law. Note this above everything else:
The right to be forgotten is not unreservedly guaranteed. It is limited especially when colliding with the right of freedom of expression and information.
A catflap disclaimer. This phenomenon is everywhere in legal text, exceptions to the rule, which supposedly by contradiction confirms the rule, as it were. Simply put: the rights of the living versus those of the dead: the dead lose. So, it's back to the authorities, informing the media, informing the public, who then share the information, for whatever reason, under the same protection that the earlier links in the chain enjoy.
I feel it is very safe to say that this means there is nothing to be done about it this side of a gigantic paradigm shift in applied ethics, which in turn must come from society at large. Laws are very difficult to change.
So, if I'm a coward for not going on that crusade, then you are a hypocrite for not championing the cause yourself, in a way that actually matters. Get that sledgehammer out, go full SJW, and bash the Mille Miglia Memorial to smithereens. Tell the Caribinieri that you are protecting people's rights to be forgotten, and then become financially ruined and go to prison. While you serve your sentence, I suggest you write a piece on how you feel about the matter, and have it publicised. Then you'd have a case, by example. And the attention of the same public who evidently has no problem with the freedom of information. For perhaps a little while. And if it's a bestseller, you may be able to pay the fine for vandalism and your legal costs. Don't be expecting any donations from me.
I'm not empowered to delete or erase parts of the mmorg database, and this discussion would have been relevant 13 years ago, when we actually debated it, in the research group. I wasn't going to say more about this, but I won't be called spineless, and then compared to a paedophile, for something I did over 10 years ago, and I in fact never even entered such a case, nor did I ever compose any entry notes that could ever be described as "death porn", and I actually joined in some of the criticism of the methods carried out, and eventually left for reasons of personal ethics, which was all I could do. I stood very tall indeed, but couldn't make my case, but I do have a squeaky clean conscience, and King Progress does not even have one, clean or otherwise, and all the while Big Robot remains silent.