Research On Mass Media Infringes Upon Right Of Reputation

The function of mass media is to ensure the freedom of expression, thecoordination of social order and the supervision of public opinion. However,different values exist and are expressed through mass media; and mass media itselfas a platform of speech and the medium of exchanging opinions, inevitably, isalways used by somebody to affect people’s reputation or credit. It is basicallycoursed by the conflict between the media supervision of public power and privaterights; also it’s the conflict all the countries have to face in legislative and judicialpractice. Different from the general other torts, the mass media tort get more personconcerned and more interests evolved and it’s damage on the reputation of the victimis also instantaneous, profound and irreversible, so it is very important here to solvethe special problems on determining the mass media tort and measuring the interests.In the first part of this paper, I mainly talk about the existing legislation and thegeneral tort. Through the analysis of the mass media tort and the summary of thecomponents of general tort, I initially construct the logic basis of the reputationinfringement under the mass media circumstance. Then I inquired to three problems:how to find the specific object hurt by mass media in the process of reputationinfringement determination, what are the standards of lower social evaluation andwhat is the determination of the fault. I believe that referencing the opinions of someforeign scholars and relevant regulations of foreign country is meaningful and will help to solve the difficulties in our judicial practices and judgments. The second partis mainly about reputation of public figures and dead people, including therestriction and protection of the right of the public figure under the environment ofmass media. By referencing and discussing the foreign judicial principle like:“actualmalice” and “separation of fact and view”, in this part, I tried hard to combine theseprinciples with our relevant legislations to solve difficult problems in news disputesevolving general figures. Also, I put forward some opinions on the protection ofreputation of the dead people. In this paper, through the discuss of the problems ofmass media reputation infringement and the judicial practice, I tried to find solutionsto the problems in the field of mass media tort and wanted to do some help on thejudges’ handling of these disputes.