With the development of science and technology improvement and informatization,,especially the broad use of internet and population of mobile phones, supervision by publicopinion on the judicial trials has been influencing the whole society more and more deep andbroad. This brings unnegligible impact and great pressure to the judiciary, and has formed anunique phenomenon of “media trial”with Chinese characteristics.“Media trial” has gone far beyond the boundaries of proper supervision to the judiciaryby the general public. Reports and comments to cases in trial have increased the risk ofdeviating judicial trial to “moral trial” and affecting the reasonable judgment of courts andjudges, and are causing possible encroachment on procedural rights of the parties, especiallythe suspect and the accused person,, and are eroding the constitutional principal of judicialindependence“Trial by media” reflects the conflict between freedom of expression and judicialindependence. In a period of economic and political transformation, neither freedom of theexpression nor judicial independence has got a chance of fully development incontemporary China. Thus makes it difficult to lead media supervision to a prudent andreasonable way.. The reason of “media trial” may attributes to three main reasons. First, themodel of administrative regulation and enterprise-operation of media in China brings adilemma in mass communication: on the one hand, media enjoy the privilege of discoursehegemony brought by their "official" identity (all media in China are state owned); on theother hand, chasing of circulation and audience ratings will inevitably cauase misleading ofthe public opinion. Second, substantial achievement in judicial reform and judicialindependence are yet to be expected. Both the administrative characteristics of the judiciaryand interference from local government need to be paid attention to. Besides, emphasizing“social effect” as an important standard in evaluating the achievernent of trial work hasshown its negative effect.. Third, conflicts between judicial judgments and publicanticipation indicate the conflicts between procedural justice and substantial justice, as well as between judicial judgment and moral evaluation, and, the cognitive deviation betweenlegal facts and “facts” as a term in news report.Considering the different principles of mass media and that of the judiciary, Chinashould take its step to clarify the boundary between proper media supervision and “mediatrial” starting with learning from matured foreign experience, to find ways to solve theconflict between the media and judicature. This paper inspected judicial restrictions on themedia model in the United Kingdom. The United States’ mode of self-control and judicialtransparency of the civil law countries have also been taking into account.The author thinks that we should proceed from China’s specific national conditions, tocomply with the following principles in the premise of promoting the freedom of express.The first one is to limit interviews within the statuary limitation of; the second is to followthe principle of "special protection" to juveniles; the third is that the principle of thepresumption of innocence should be strictly carried out; and finally, the principle of "actualmalice" should be adopted in supervision of judicial trials. The media should exercise theirright of supervision properly when the rules of public communication are being followed.Self-discipline of the media and the principle of balanced reporting, and distinguishbetween facts and comments will also be helpful to make balance between necessarymedia supervision and independent trials of the judiciary. |