Legal Regulations Of News Reports Of Criminal Cases Under Investigation

It is inevitable for the Police, as an important source of information for criminal cases under investigation, to contact with the media in the process of investigation. However, when the investigations are being conducted, the reports can have both positive and negative influences on the resolution of the criminal cases. At present, some deficiencies still exist in the ways employed by the Police in China to handle the news reports about the criminal cases under investigation. Therefore, in order to fully meet the rights of the public for awareness of the cases and promote harmony and stability of society, it is extremely important to explore the relationship between the investigation of criminal cases and the news report about the cases, provided that the criminal cases can be smoothly resolved.In this paper, the author has discussed the legal regulations of news reports for criminal cases under investigation in three parts by combining daily working practices and researches in recent years.The first part discusses the cooperation between the investigation of criminal cases and the media reports about cases. The coverage of the media about the cases under investigation reflects legalized democracy and the rights of the pubic awareness. Secondly, the execution of the rights to investigate should be supervised to prevent the abuse of the power. And the cooperation can play a positive role in many aspects, such as mobilization of the public to provide clues about cases and assist in the detection and resolution of the cases.The part two mainly analyzes the conflicts between the investigation of criminal cases and the news reports of the media about the cases. The legal rules about the media’s coverage involving the criminal cases under investigation have far from been straightened out as the absence and overrun of the media can be commonly observed. As for the Police, The disclosure of information has not been standardized, the public opinions are not timely guided, and the ability to handle the media should be improved. And as for the media, they lack strong awareness of social responsibility and interfere inappropriately with the criminal cases, abuse the rights to freely report news, report the criminal cases overly and intensively, including exaggeration of details and speculation of certain cases. Those behaviors can negatively affect the investigation of the criminal cases. And some media agencies even violate the journalistic ethics and cause harmful impact on the investigations of criminal cases.The third part proposes to build the legal regulations about the news reports of criminal cases under investigation. Through analyzing the relationship between the investigation and the media’s coverage of the criminal cases and the current social-economic political culture, the author suggests that the basic principles of news coverage about the investigations of criminal cases should be established and abided by, the press release about certain cases should be appropriately conducted, and the relevant standards should be set up. At the same time, the news coverage of extremely serious cases should be limited and any violation of legal regulations should be strictly traced and penalized.