Press freedom advocates say an unusual 13-year publication ban in a B.C. murder case exemplifies the increasingly uphill battle they face in keeping the public informed about what’s happening in the courts.

Earlier this year, a justice agreed to end a ban on identifying a man who’d claimed responsibility for a brutal homicide in the central B.C. city of Williams Lake. The ban had been in place since the start of his murder trial in 2011, and was meant to protect the accused from possible retaliation by an alleged accomplice he’d named in his supposed confession.