Not in terms of the extent, but whether the principle is taken into account or not.
A rather nebulous concept appears to be this "common knowledge" principle, which doesn't require empirical proof (e.g., you aren't required to prove that Wednesday is the day after Tuesday).
Whether that extends to the concept that being accused of criminal acts by a former supposed "expert" (who was clearly out of his depth) in the context of a still-missing child, in a case in which your suspect status had been lifted and thus may have gained hope concerning the renewed pursuit of the search, is more likely to increase your suffering, decrease it or cancel it out remains to be seen.
In the UK we're accustomed to the idea that you can't say certain things in print (or video), and probably we're so accustomed it's very odd to us that it's not the same in other countries. It's not the same in the US either. In the US it's likely his book would still be being sold in shops (assuming there's the demand to make it worthwhile for the publisher) - they don't ban books.
Different with the dvd of course. In an equivalent situation, I don't think that would ever have been shown on mainstream US television (books may not be banned, but films can effectively be denied exposure). But there would have been other documentaries with different scripts shown, far more bold than any UK ones have been.
In the UK we have no equivalent of interim police reports, and any internal documentation is never published here anyway (we've no FOI laws like US states) - GA probably couldn't have published his book without that (or it would have had to be self-published).
Do we know why the McCanns never tried to prevent broadcast of the documentary? Or did they, but the effort failed?
