I don’t know if this qualifies for what the OP is looking for:
In Germany, newspaper articles occasionally change names of crime victims, witnesses or even for convicted perpetrators, when for some reason it is deemed necessary to mention a name in the first place. It is an alternative to just giving an initial letter or their true name. This often happens for feature articles or interviews, in particular when the person’s feelings in the aftermath are explored. When this is done, the first occurrence of the invented name is marked as such with an asterisk and a foot note. I don’t know how the US handles such things.
From my semi-regular reading of UK newspapers it seems to me, that this is not normally done there. Either the full name is given, or it is stated the the name can not be disclosed for whatever reason.
Good read, too. This happened in New Rochelle halfway through the original run of “The Dick Van Dyke Show”. One wonders what Laura would have done if she had been involved.
The film Monster about Aileen Wuornos. Although the central character’s name was the real one, they changed the name of Aileen’s real-life girlfriend Tyria Moore to Selby Wall.
Two examples that stretch the premise.
The movie Green Zone took an excellent non-fiction book and turned it into complete horseshit.
When Stephen Ambrose was researching Band of Brothers he discovered the story of Fritz Niland who was a soldier in a different battalion in the same regiment. When the war department found out that his three brothers were killed he was pulled out of Normandy after he jumped in. The story of finding him wasn’t nearly as dramatic as they needed so the Niland brothers were changed to the Ryan brothers and the action was turned up. At the end of the war they found out one of the brothers was not dead but was in a Japanese POW camp.
“Street Justice: The Bronx”, a true crime program that started showing on Investigation Discovery about a month ago, has “Certain details have been altered to protect the innocent.”