On The Civil Liability Of The Press Against The Right Of Reputation

News infringe on the rights of reputation is a tort which is the conflict between the freedom of the press and the right of reputation. The country has the obligation to protect freedom of the press and the right of reputation; however, it will inevitably result in a conflict of two rights legislation. This thesis will discuss the problem of how to balance the conflict of rights. Our existing legislation does not have a complete legal norm of dealing with rights conflict. The adjustment of the conflict is only dependent on the judicial interpretation of the specification in "General Principles of the Civil Law" and "Tort Law". Based on this characteristic, in balance mode, infringing content is divided into public affairs and private affairs, and citizens is divided into public figures and ordinary people as infringement counterpart; in the violations related to public, freedom of the press will be given the highest priority no matter the counterpart is public figures or ordinary people; violations related to private will give priority to protecting freedom of the press if counterpart is public figures and the news reports are truth, it will give priority to protecting the right of reputation for the unrealistic news report; ordinary characters are different from other processing, it will give priority to protecting the right of reputation no matter the news report is truth or not. Based on the legislative norms, due to the particularity of news infringe on the right of reputation subject, it is recommend bringing this subject in the fourth chapter of the "Tort Liability Act" which is special provisions on the responsibility of the subject, because the infringement subject of the press against the right of reputation is the News agencies which established through legal procedures. In the point view of infringement object, the major infringement object of News Tort is personality rights of civil rights, however, the major infringement object of general tort are not only personality rights but also property rights. The behavioral trait of News Tort subject is through the mass media to publish news, novels or other written works. According to those characteristics, it is having greater operability to bring News Tort subject in the fourth chapter of the "Tort Liability Act". Furthermore, I suggest introducing of punitive damages system in the case hearing, and I also expect it is can provide relief to the victim of News against the right of reputation and deter the News intentional behavior infringes on the right of reputation by norm the infringement subject and improvement of the system. It is has significance in protect civil subject’s personality rights and give full play to the media’s right to freedom of the press.