News Infringement Under The Civil Law Perspective Study

With the development of journalism, the relationships between press freedom and human rights protection, society informedness and personal privacy, personal orientation and social orientation are closely correlated, followed by speech freedom of citizens and the phenomenon of benefit system protected by state authority power. However, any speech freedom is relative and the speech freedom can only be exerted within the limit of legal rules and regulations. Once infringement happens, because of rapidness of spreading news, obligee will suffer irretrievable loss. How to balance the two, when exertion of press freedom and rights of citizen personality clash, is very important. The author thinks the optimal way to the problem is to regulate scientifically and distinct them. The paper is divided into four parts, talking about fundamental theories of press infringement, civil responsibility of press infringement, the analysis of official relative lawmaking about press infringement, China's practicality and system, and serious research and exploration into the construction of protection system of speech freedom and rights of civil personality by means of conception analysis, legal interpretation, benefit balance, and contrastive analysis.The first part is about the introduction to and exploration of the general theory of press infringement. Press freedom is one of rights laid down by our constitution, but its exertion can't go beyond certain limits, otherwise, person benefits of citizens and legal persons would be violated, i.e. infringement happens. The distinction of press infringement involves the following standards: time standard, subjectivity standard, subjective standard, objectivity standard, and objective standard. And main forms of press infringement are press libel, press contempt, exposure of privacy, serious distortion and misinformation of press contents, but its elements must contain causal relationship of the four: distorting facts, act of tort, fault of doer, relationship of act of trespass and results of distortion.The second part is to research into civil responsibility of press infringement, which hasn't been laid down as a particular infringement in general provisions of the civil law in China and applied to general principle of infringement. The part analyzes subjectivity of civil responsibility in press infringement, that is source of information, reporter, press, which, combined with blame and responsibility of general infringement, is divided into property and non-property, and applied to fault principle.and infault principle As to infringement of personal rights, the paper stresses redress rules of mental impairment. Any responsibility of infringement has defense reasons, and defense reasons include agreement from reporter, just critic, information from authority, fault of third person, reasonable utilization or repeated spread.The third part makes introduction to and compares related rules about press infringement in two legal systems of the countries concerned. The legal systems of Britain and American protect personal rights of citizens by lawsuit; endow judges with rights of making laws, establish limitation principles of press freedom based on samples, all of which are advantageous to concrete application of juridical practice. The legal system in mainland, due to the limit of lawmaking technique, regulates the distinction of speech freedom and personal rights, using generalized language, which just stays on abstract surface. But its system is more humane, as to general personal rights, than theirs, and more favorable to protect personal rights comprehensively. The convergent development that relief in the form of money combines with other means, as to relief of press infringement, appears in two legal systems.The fourth part makes hypothesis about protection of press freedom and that of personal rights, combined with those rules in our country. Although the constitution has regulated no abuse of rights, it's inconvenient to perform. The author thinks benefit balance should be made between exertion of speech freedom and protection of personal rights in reference for legislative experiences of foreign countries. When exertion of speech freedom and personal rights clash, the latter should enjoy priority, and meanwhile balance its benefits; so does speech freedom when it conflicts with public rights. So we should set up general personal rights, confirm right of privacy as an independent right, enlarge portraiture right, and establish benefit principle between right of speech freedom and protection of personal right.