Responsibilities And Privileges Of A Free Press

Lift the United States, everyone will involuntarily think of one word-"free".Although there are also a lot of preconditions and special conditions in Americanfreedom, and it is far from being representative of the ideal type, but it is undeniable thatshe has recognized worldwide as a higher level of being a free country. After twohundred years from the founding of America, the efforts to bring the word freedom isdeeply engraved into the American spirit. As The First Amendment to the Constitution,many laws dealing with the rights of freedom of speech and expression becomeincreasingly more reasonable and open through the generations of judges’ using andexplanation, and continue to adapt to the needs of developing era. The government haschanged several times and also the law, the people have suffered harsh "silence" severaltimes, the media has become a political vassal several times. But in the unremittingefforts of judges and journalists yearning for freedom, almost every time lows areaccompanied by freedom of introspection and improvement. Today, the growth ofAmerican freedom of the press has been able to put back on the table for people to studyand research, not for shy, which can be said to be an achievement undoubtedly. Doingresearch on freedom of the press can not ignore American freedom of the press, researchin its legal system especially meaningful for China’s related area.The U.S. press freedom studies always focus on the positive right to the news mediaas the subject of right. However, as the rapidly evolving media tools in today, ordinaryindividuals have also been involved in the collection and dissemination of news, theinformation among news events become more complex and the contradiction betweenpress freedom and other rights are also more intense, the legal regulations impose variousissues become more important. This paper aims for the status of press freedomcontradiction, finding solutions in the law precedent of the United States, so as toprovide a reference for legislation related issues.This paper bases on journalism and sociology theory, aims for the problem ofconflict of freedom and other rights appear in the current press freedom, combiningdifferent legal principles in different eras in American judicial practice, to do a study of the limits and privileges the freedom of the press. Paper is divided into the followingsections:The introduction part describes the significance of the topic of this article, theresearch perspective, the research object and the current situation of this area. The mainconcepts of the article——"press freedom" is also be defined in this part.The first chapter describes the new issues exists in practice of press freedom in thenew era, including the conflicts of freedom of the press and freedom of public andprivate power.The second chapter starts with Spencer’s "equal freedom" theories, combines withthe legal precedents of America, describes why freedom of the press should be restricts incase of conflict with the individual rights such as reputation and private right and whatrules should be used for legal restrictions.The third chapter starts with the interpretation of the Hutchins Commission’s "socialresponsibility" to explore what responsibility the subject of the right of a free pressshould bear in the exercise of the press. This part also describes how to do the legalbalance between the right of a free press and the national security or independence of thejudiciary in the legal precedents of American.The fourth chapter describes Dworkin’s freedom and equality theory, explore theinside contradictions in the freedom of the press itself, and try to providerecommendations for conflict solution.