Covert Interview And The Protection Of The Right Of Privacy

In recent years, covert interview is a favorite form of interview for journalists, widely used in mass medium field. Due to its novelty, variety and peculiarity, covert interview has become more and more popular among audience. It can not only obtain news source which are difficult to get in public pattern, expose social crime and vice phenomenon, but also satisfy the needs of public knowing the social true situation with the largest degree, and develop the inspection of public opinion. Anyhow, owing to the lack of law regulations, journalists abuse this kind of interview in many situations, even illegally. With the increase use of covert interview, news dispute and news lawsuit are increasing too. Some journalists and medium corporations are sued to the court, because they violate the legal rights of citizen by abusing covert interview. Especially, the right of privacy is one of the most easily intruded one. As an independent personality right, the right of privacy protects people's self-realm from the outside interference. Usually, covert interview is put into practice without getting admit from the interviewee, so under this situation, people's private life is threatened by this kind of interview. The clash between covert interview and the right of privacy can hardly be avoided. This text is beginning from introducing the characteristics of the covert interview, meanwhile analyzing the privacy and describing other countries how to protect people's privacy with law regulations. Then the text analyzes the reasons of the clash between the two benefits, and puts forward some suggestion about how to solute the clash. In the third part, it describes the violation of the right of privacy from the covert interview, including the violation behaviors, law duties and the grounds of opposition. At last, a series of suggestion and hope are put forward. In one hand, the medium realm should enhance self-control; in the other hand, the law circle should improve legislation in order to regulate the legal status of covert interview and enhance the protection of the people's privacy. This text is composed of two parts, the preface and the formal text. Preface part mainly introduces the motive of writing this text. The formal part is divided into four chapters: chapter 1, General introduction of covert interview; Chapter 2, The clash between covert interview and the right of privacy; Chapter 3, The violation to privacy from covert interview; Chapter 4, Enhance the regulation of covert interview and the protection of privacy. The details of each chapter are as follows: Chapter 1: It mainly introduces some basic knowledge concerning covert interview. The first two parts introduce its concept, origin, characteristics and the situation of using. The last part describes several countries' regulation about the law status of covert interview. Due to lack of definite regulation, covert interview is placed in an embarrassed ground. For one thing, covert interview develops the inspection of public opinion, strengthening the medium competition ability, providing more and more news which takes super-real feels to the public; But for another, this kind of interview usually brings some judicial problems. Then, the protection of privacy from covert interview is put forward. Chapter 2: At first it introduces what is privacy and its contents, with the protection situation of most countries. Then it tells us the clash between covert interview and the right of privacy has several reasons, including three essential reasons and five superficial ones. At last, it puts forward the suggestion of solving the conflict. In essence, the clash between covert interview and privacy is the one between the freedom of press and the right of privacy. Both of them are human's basic rights. The resolution of the clash is that, regarding protecting the right of privacy as the principle, but when the right of privacy concerns the public benefits, the mass medium can get involved the private realm with proper method. Chapter 3: Violation to the right of privacy fro...