Freedom Of The Press And The Reputation Of Public Figures Conflict And Its Legal Regulation

Freedom of press is the constitutional right of a citizen. The supervisionby public by means of media not only aims at public officials but alsoat public figures. The confliction between the freedom of press and theright of reputation of public figures has also been a big problem in modernsociety. However, although some judges use so-called public figuresprinciple or tolerance obligation to make judgment, there is still no suchrules in our country and different opinions exist among law scholars. Howto solve this problem has become a difficult issue not only in theory butalso in legislation.In view of the consideration above, I divided this essay into five sectionsas follows discussing how to solve the conflict:The first chapter refers to the concept of the freedom of press, thereputation and the right of reputation, analyzing the styles and reasonof the conflict.The following chapter introduces some American cases about this matterespecially the New York Times case, reviewing the development of thepublic figures principle and the influence on Europe, Japan and othercountries.The third chapter makes a comparison between Chinese and American lawthrough some cases such as FanZhiyi' s case, pointing out some legislativeand judicial omissions and defects in our country.The fourth chapter is about Jurisprudential analysis on the conflictionof freedom of press and the right of public figure' s reputation,concluding that weakening the protection of the right public figure' sreputation has actual rationality.The last chapter makes a definition of the concept of public figures,putting forward some relative advice on legislation, claiming that weshould make a reasonable limitation on the right of publicfigures' reputation while we protect it.