The Media-related Tort

With the social and economic development of our society, the gradual advancement in citizens' awareness of their civil rights, as well as the protection of these rights, many welcome changes have occurred in our country's journalism. However, it also faces a lot of problems which is few under the condition of the planned economy. The media-related tort is one of them. Under the present judicial system, Media-related torts appear constantly, which expose the conflicts between press freedom and news supervision, between individual privacy and the right to know, and between the individual interests and the public interests.Now we are building a country governing according to law, to which the perfection of the supervision by public opinion is an important guarantee. In the process of performing the role of supervision, media conflicts with the personal right of the civilians, legal representatives and other organizations for many reasons. It is a significant matter to find the balance point between the protection of the personal rights and exertion of the supervision by media properly in the field of journalism and the law.This paper makes an analysis of the problems above in four sections.The first section: This section starts with some issues about fundamental theories such as the conception, the characteristics as well as the components of media-related tort. Consequently the paper shows that just like the ordinary actions of tort, the actors of the media-related tort infringe the lawful right and interests of the civilians or the legal representatives. However the media-related tort is different from the ordinary one and it has its own characteristics for it takes the advantage of the media to infringe the legal right. The components of the media-related tort include the wrong doing of the press activities,the wrong doing of the news organizations and journalist,the actual infringement of the work, the Cause-and effect relationshio between work and the result. This is the first crucial step in the analysis and judgment of media-related torts.The second section: This section starts with the present situations of the media-related tort, and then analyzes its reason. Form the first media-related tort in our country, there are more and more media-related tort cases. The journalism is facing great challenges. Not only the traditional media-related torts such as those through TV, newspapers, magazines, broadcast and communications are more and more, the new-born media such as the network and the phones also becomes the main carrier of the media-related torts. Because of the different carriers from other forms of torts, the torts through network have different characters and representations. The terms, for example, "human resources search engine" and "meat machine" appeared recently. It mainly infringes the right of reputation and the right of privacy, which focuses the attention of the field of journalism and the law. The imperfection of our country's lawful system, the lack of the uniform rules for the news organizations and the inadequacy of the personal quality are the reasons for the frequent occurrence of the media-related torts in our country.The third section: This section analyzes three main types of media-related torts and their defense arguments such as the infringement on the right of reputation, the right of privacy and the right of portrait. In the practical cases, the objects of the media-related tort are involved together. The infringement on the right of reputation of the death, the right of common privacy and the right of collective portrait is the relatively confusing problem both in the theory and the practice. It is analyzed and studied in this section.The fourth section: This section puts forward the preventive measures against media-related torts. After its reform and the opening policy, the increasing cases of the media-related tort reflects not only the gradual increase of the individual law awareness and the force in the execution of supervision by the media, but also the imperfection of the lawful system in our country, the disorder of the competition in the journalism and the inadequate personal quality of the performers. This section provides the preventative solutions to the media-related tort from different aspects such as form the perfection of the lawful system, the formulation of the perfect rules in the field of the media, the increase of the personal quality of the performers and the construction of the healthy environment in the network.This paper, starting with the essence theory of the media-related tort, analyzes the present situation of the media and its reason, then demonstrates these different types of media-related torts and their defense arguments and finally puts forward the preventive solutions. The annual increase of media-related torts in our country not only increases the work of the court, but also decreases the audiences' confidence in the media. Consequently, it possesses great theoretical and practical significance in analyzing the media-related tort theory to prevent the media-related tort and avoid its cases.