Discussion Of Mass Media Tort Disputes

The conflict between the speech freedom and the right to reputation and privacy are not rare to see which usually refers to media tort. The famous prof. Zhu suli of Peking Univ. has pointed out that it can not avoid to invade the other right when law safeguards one kind of rights, so it should scheme reasonably between freedom speech and the right to reputation to balance right and interests of parties. His view is popular in international law circle. The federal supreme court judge in U.S.A once said: the duty of court lies in deciding which one of interests and rights is more necessary to be protected, that is to say, by comparing the speech freedom of individual and social values with decrees of limitation of speech freedom, a choice could be made reasonably. In my point of view, the way to weigh the values of rights and interests of parties is to look for their meaning and reasonability. With this principle, the thesis mainly focus on following points: Chapter one: the subject of media invasion and their liabilities. The requirement of media to investigate and verify all news and letters from reader, not their employees, is not workable. It can be resolved depending the content of news resource. As for manuscript by batman of unit or enterprise, not reporter, its truth is responsible by propagandist and his serving unit or enterprise, while its validity of content and resource should be ensured by mass media. In Chapter two, about objective of media invasion, there are three parts to be discussed: the right to reputation of natural person, legal person and government organs. The thesis doubts those verdicts that the right to reputation of government is defended by general principle of civil law and suggests to offer protection by public law. Chapter three: the constitutive requirements of media invasion. Five ones are discussed: the news is published, the illegal behavior, the victim is identified, the subjective fault, the causality between media invasion and the consequence of harm. Due to the confusion to distinguish the slander and insult in practice, the thesis introduces the criteria and regulation abroad. The identification of victim is fully researched, and the author argues that it should be the constitutive requirement of media invasion to right to privacy. One way to define the identification: the writer or reporter knows somebody is reported, the reported one is aware of this fact, the relative people know whom is reported. And the last one is most important. Furthermore, the author introduces briefly the theory of slander to group, points out the shortcoming of this aspect in China's regulation. Chapter four is main point of this thesis, where counterargument reasons about the right to reputation and privacy are fully argued. The author investigates the concept and application areas about the truth, fair comment, news content inconsistent with the facts, suggests to distinguish the meaning of truth applied by law, by objective and by media circle. Legislation should be enriched to protect those fair comments from scientific and agricultural circle. Expanding the authoritative news resource, not merely limited to governmental organs or functionaries. Concerning with counterargument reason of right to privacy, the criteria to verify public interests by adult's view is argued. Three kinds of public persons should be protected respectively at different level. Certainly, we must aware of not violating the right to privacy of public persons.