You ask a fair question, which I wrote about in a post just in the last day or so. (I was remembering a post from more than a year ago, as I recall, from another HN participant.) Different societies resolve these trade-offs differently, but the United States strongly favors making all arrest records public precisely to avoid having secret arrests, a feature of life in countries with a secret police service. (I have lived in such a country.) Yeah, sure, if I had a mugshot, I'd rather not have it all over the Internet, but if I did have a mugshot on the Internet, it wouldn't displace everything else about me on the Internet. As I recall, there is a mug shot of Bill Gates on the Internet, but that doesn't do the most to form his reputation.
So simply put, the trade-off here in the United States is that speech is counteracted by more speech. Rather little is done in secret here. Again, I have lived where the trade-offs are different, and I think that this is a generally desirable trade-off, and that United States defamation law strikes a good balance, with the defence of truth being very dispositive in defamation cases.
AFTER EDIT: Contrary to what is suggested by HN participant lutusp in another subthread here, there is no "false light" problem in the case the complaining doctor is complaining about. I am a lawyer, and I wouldn't dream of relying on Wikipedia for legal advice or even lay summaries of the law on most subjects.
Sorry about the slow reply - I didn't expect this sub-thread to be so lively. I get the legal arguments for your position, but have a third perspective, being from Western Europe. I think the best thing I could do is work this pet issue of mine up into an essay and make it into its own thread later.
So simply put, the trade-off here in the United States is that speech is counteracted by more speech. Rather little is done in secret here. Again, I have lived where the trade-offs are different, and I think that this is a generally desirable trade-off, and that United States defamation law strikes a good balance, with the defence of truth being very dispositive in defamation cases.
AFTER EDIT: Contrary to what is suggested by HN participant lutusp in another subthread here, there is no "false light" problem in the case the complaining doctor is complaining about. I am a lawyer, and I wouldn't dream of relying on Wikipedia for legal advice or even lay summaries of the law on most subjects.