I was lecturing recently on free press/fair trial issues, and touched on the CNN/Noriega case. In this case the court issued a temporary restraining order against CNN to prevent the network from broadcasting tapes of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega talking with his lawyers. The judge felt that broadcasting the tapes would unduly benefit the government in designing its strategy for prosecuting the former leader on drug charges. Nevertheless, CNN did broadcast one of the conversations. The restraining order was lifted eventually, but CNN was found guilty of contempt of court for broadcasting the original tape.
One of my students started asking me questions about the case that I couldn’t answer, so I did some digging and came up with this article from 1993 from American Journalism Review. Well worth reading.