Last week was not a very good time to be a reporter - although it helped if you had never been employed by one of Rupert Murdoch’s diminishing stable of newspapers.

It looks as if journalists, like solicitors, are about to lose the privilege of self-regulation - together with their jobs.

But this column is not about the News of the World or any other paper that may have been obtaining information by unlawful means.

It is about two rather different media stories that were overlooked last week.

On Tuesday, the attorney general Dominic Grieve appeared in person before the lord chief justice to argue that the publishers of the Daily Mirror and the Sun should be fined for contempt of court.

They had both published what he described as ‘exceptionally adverse and hostile’ articles about Christopher Jefferies, the retired Bristol schoolteacher who was arrested at the end of last year by police investigating the death of Joanna Yeates.

What was striking about the case is that Jefferies is entirely innocent.

Yeates’s landlord was released after questioning and another man, who admitted killing the landscape architect, is awaiting trial for her murder.

So there is no risk that the newspapers will prejudice the trial of the man about whom they wrote.

But, of course, the papers did not know that at the time.

The attorney general relies on section 2(2) of the Contempt of Court Act, which deals with publications creating a substantial risk that the course of justice will be ‘seriously impeded or prejudiced’.

It’s the word ‘impeded’, often overlooked, that counts here.

If Jefferies had been charged with the murder, the stories that had already been printed might have made it harder for him to have gathered the evidence needed to exonerate him.

That’s not just character evidence: the attorney said there was a ‘very real risk’ that local residents might have been deterred by the press reports from giving evidence about his relations with the victim and his movements at the time of the murder.

The newspapers should also have realised that someone else might have been charged - as, in fact, happened.

A defendant in that position might use adverse publicity about an innocent person, in what the attorney called ‘an obvious diversionary tactic’.

Another problem facing Lord Judge, Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Owen was that they did not have much context for the three articles complained of.

When a court is asked to stop a case because of adverse publicity, it normally sees a broad selection of press reports.

In this case, the judges were shown only the articles that the attorney general regarded as being in contempt of court.

How do they know whether the Mirror and the Sun were, as the attorney argues, worse than all the others? And how can the court have been sure that putative jurors would have read the Mirror or the Sun?

In response to the attorney’s arguments, the Mirror pointed out that no evidence of impedance had been produced.

Even if the two articles published by the paper were ‘in part prejudicial’, argued Jonathan Caplan QC, ‘such prejudice is in no sense so extreme that a juror cannot be expected to disregard it’.

Given that the postulated trial would have taken place nine months after the arrest, the ‘fade factor’ would have affected a notional juror’s recollection of the details.

For the Sun, Adrienne Page QC argued that calling Jefferies ‘a little creepy’ or an ‘oddball’ did not suggest he had an increased propensity to commit murder.

She said there was no evidence that witnesses would have been deterred from helping him.

I don’t suppose I would be in contempt of court if I told readers what I thought of these arguments.

But perhaps it would be courteous to wait until judgment has been delivered.

So let me move on to another restriction on the media. Clause 13 of the Education Bill, if enacted, would make it a criminal offence to identify a teacher accused of criminal misconduct against a pupil at the school where the teacher works.

Unless lifted by a magistrate, the restrictions would remain in place until the teacher was charged or disciplined – which might never happen.

Introducing the clause in the House of Lords last month, the education minister Lord Hill of Oareford said the government wanted to give teachers ‘better protection from false allegations made by pupils, which could be used to undermine their authority and have a devastating effect on their lives’.

The restrictions apply to individuals: a single tweet could land you with a fine of up to £5,000.

But they will have much greater impact on the media generally. Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the solicitor Andrew Phillips, said during the bill’s committee stage last week that the clause ‘strikes at the heart of freedom of the press, law and order, and open justice’.

He was supported by the Conservative peer Lord Black of Brentwood - Guy Black of the Press Complaints Commission - who described the clause as a ‘damaging precedent’ based on ‘scant evidence’.

The government was not prepared to budge, although other peers were already suggesting that the restrictions should be extended to support staff and security staff in colleges - and even to staff in children’s homes and young offender institutions.

Why stop there? Why not stop the press naming anyone accused of criminal conduct but not charged - someone like Christopher Jefferies, for example?

It’s the thin end of a very broad wedge.