IT is not uncommon for editors to receive desperate calls from people due to appear before courts, pleading for their names not to be published.

I once took such a call from a North-East family doctor who had been caught kerb-crawling. It would ruin his career and his marriage, he said.

The doctor's name was published because I believed it was in the public interest: that his patients had a right to know that their GP was soliciting prostitutes. As it turned out, he was back in court soon afterwards, charged with the same offence.

I know editors who have had calls from court defendants, threatening to commit suicide if their name appears in print. A terrible dilemma but, once a precedent is set, where would the line be drawn?

I was, however, troubled last week about the fairness of naming a man appearing before Teesside Crown Court. He was a teacher called Joseph Kerr, accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl at a Darlington school. The case had been hanging over Mr Kerr for months because his original trial was postponed for legal reasons last year. During that time, he had inevitably been suspended from teaching.

Mr Kerr was named and pictured in newspapers as the case unfolded in court. In the end, the jury took less than an hour and a half to find him not guilty, but how much damage had been done?

Teachers are particularly vulnerable because they work so closely with children, often in one-to-one situations. A teacher could easily find themself accused of sex offences, face automatic suspension, and a possible court case open to public scrutiny.

Children must feel able to sound the alarm and it is right that their anonymity is protected. But it did strike me during the Kerr case that there was an inherent unfairness and that perhaps there is a case for the law to protect the identity of accused teachers until they are found guilty.

Again, it is a question of where the line would be drawn and I accept the legal complexities involved. Anyone, in any walk of life, who is wrongly accused of a sex offence, would feel that the system is unbalanced. But there is an argument for treating teachers as a special case.

Newspapers are, of course, open to the charge that they don't have to name a defendant, irrespective of whether the law allows them to. That is true. But the reality is that names are published because we know that other newspapers, as well as radio and television stations, will do the same.

What editors can - and should - always do is strive to ensure that the coverage of such cases is as balanced as possible. And that is why The Northern Echo gave front page prominence to the fact that Joseph Kerr had been found not guilty.

WORD reaches me of the newspaper reporter who was interviewing a 104-year-old woman.

"What's the best thing about being 104?" the reporter asked.

"No peer pressure," came the reply.