What's the actual uk law on past offences?

Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is about employers.

If you are convicted in a public court then tough luck, especially if you are building up a profile as a “broadcaster” or “public figure”.

There was an Eastenders actor, Leslie Grantham, Dirty Den, who had his past outed; turned out he’d stabbed a taxi driver in Germany 20 years before he was famous, which was outed.

What I don’t understand is how a person could, hypothetically, take ownership of some offences, like for example, an assault with a golf club, and even make jokes about them, like playing golf at people’s homes, or explain away 6 months in prison reported in the national newspapers, as passing a bad cheque but then claim they are entitled to privacy over other offences.

What can I do if the media reports my spent conviction?If details of your spent record are reported in the media, you could try contacting the organisation/publication and ask them to remove reference to it as it has now been ‘wiped out by law’ – whilst this term isn’t technically accurate, for the purposes of ‘reporting’, it should have the desired effect.

If your conviction is recorded online, you will need to ask the organisation on whose website it appears both to remove it and to advise Google that any cached references need to be removed.

Suing a media organisation for defamation

If your request for the removal of a record of a spent conviction is not followed, you could inform the organisation that you consider the continued publication of the conviction as ‘malicious’ and commence legal proceedings against them. You are entitled to make a claim for defamation against a media organisation that reports your spent conviction. If proven, you would win the libel case and be paid damages for the effect that the reference to this conviction has had on your reputation. Sometimes, the threat alone is enough for them to act.

If you were to make such a claim, the organisation would, however, have various defences open to it, including:

• The defence of justification. This allows the media to report things that can be shown to be true without fear of legal action. However, this defence fails if you can show that your conviction is spent and that the arguments about malicious intentions apply since this would mean that there was no public interest in referring to the conviction.
• The defence of fair comment. This allows opinions about public figures relating to a conviction they have (even if it spent) to be published, if they are honestly held opinions and can be shown to be in the public interest. This defence works on the assumption that the actions of those in public positions (e.g. politicians) are open to public scrutiny.
• The defence of privilege argues that the public interest in freedom of speech outweighs the rights of the individual making the claim for defamation. Qualified privilege can be used by the media to enable them to make fair and accurate reports of a conviction, or to quote words from a case.

However, any of these defences can be rebutted if it is proven that there was no public interest in reporting this material or that the statement was reported with malice. Malice is defined in law as ‘published with an irrelevant, spiteful or improper motive’ (Herbage v Pressdram 1984). The burden of proving malice in such a case would rest on you, and is very difficult to do so in practice.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong as it's early and I'm not totally awake, but reading the above from @Silverdogblue link it seems that it can be reported if there is provable public interest (a few million views of an article would surely class as public interest?) And it's not done out of spite or malice.

Luckily it's on the person who thinks they have been defamed to prove malice was the reason for publication.

But further down that page it also says that:

"In practice, newspapers tend to take a pragmatic approach about the likelihood of libel litigation set against the copies sold. Most news journalism can argue that it is serving some kind of public interest by making revelations about past convictions, including ‘spent’ convictions, and that there is no malice. This means that the media can publish the details of, and comments, on ‘spent’ convictions without fear of libel law suits and the consequences in terms of paying damages if the case was lost."

And

"Once a conviction is online, and so in the public domain, the media can quote it in their outlets since they are not ‘revealing’ anything new, just stating a known fact. Nobody’s data is being invaded if past news sources are quoted and privacy rights are not being compromised. This seems to be true even in the case of ‘spent’ convictions."

I believe it is lawful to wear a bobble hat, but should said pictures of bobble hat wearing cause trauma to other, you could be sued for damages.

For DBS purposes some convictions are never spent, including sexual offences against minors. Why doesn't that apply to reporting? I guess it's to do with public protection.
Thing is, whatever certain people might threaten certain websites with in terms of legal action, we know 😆 certain people's credibility is shot forever. Tick tock!

The publication of ‘spent’ convictions by the media can breach the provisions of the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (ROA). Under the ROA, your conviction becomes spent at the end of a specified ‘rehabilitation period’ (so long as you have not been given any further convictions during this time).

Under the ROA, when a conviction has become spent, it is as though, for most purposes, it has never occurred. You are not obliged to disclose a spent conviction, and you should not be prejudiced as a result of one. This means that in law, for a media organisation to report your spent conviction amounts to an untruth, meaning that they are open to accusations of defamation.
It is not a criminal offence to report a spent conviction, so the ROA does not impose a criminal penalty on journalists or media organisations who do so. As a result of the ROA, technically, anybody reading about the spent conviction shouldn’t use that information in a way that disadvantages you in any way. Of course, this is difficult to prove, and even if you could prove it, there is little you can do.

https://unlock.org.uk/advice/reporting-criminal-records-media/

looks like just enough for some sort of lawsuit/injunction for some people, should they be that way inclined.