The Law Applicable To The Elements Of Liability For Infringement Of Defamation In News Transmission

News dissemination defamation refers to acts of the news media as a party,infringing on the civil rights of others' reputation and other civil rights due to dissemination of false and untrue news.The right of reputation is the object of infringement with the highest frequency in news communication infringement,and it is also one of the key research objects of communication infringement.The elements of tort liability constitute an important basis for the court to determine whether the infringer bears the tort liability,and is a necessary condition for the infringer to assume responsibility.This article mainly adopts the quantitative research method,based on the official document platform of China Judgment Documents Network,and uses traditional mass news media(newspapers,radio,television)and news websites as research objects,and selects a total of 290 news dissemination lawsuits from 2014 to 2019 as a statistical sample,the civil judgment of the final trial is organized and summarized from the four responsibility components to win and lose the news media in the case,and strive to comprehensively and objectively describe the actual status and reasons of the winning and losing of the news media in the judicial system.The first chapter is a theoretical review.Regarding the constituent elements of tort liability,the academic community regards the "four elements" as the mainstream.The judicial interpretation clarifies that the constituent elements of tort liability in China adopt four elements.These four constituent elements are the object of proof in the defamation lawsuit of news dissemination,and the plaintiff should bear the burden of proof in the sense of conduct and result for the four constituent elements.The second chapter to the fifth chapter are the main parts of this article.The author statistically analyzes the application and characteristics of the four liability constituent elements of illegal behavior,subjective fault,damage result and causality in judicial practice.Regarding the elements of illegal acts,the court has generally accepted the standard of "news" for the determination of the content of the report;the court's determination that the news comment constitutes a violation of the law is more objective;for the proof of the authenticity of the content,there are still cases where the burden of proof is inverted.Regarding the subjective fault elements,the media has a little intentional infringement in the defamation of news dissemination;the determination of whether there is a fault is mainly based on whether the media fulfills the review obligations,which can be divided into prior review obligations and post-correction obligations;in addition,the court recognizes the media 's freedom of speech The right of priority protection,the plaintiff has a certain obligation of tolerance.Regarding the damage result requirements,defamation may cause three kinds of results: the reduction of social evaluation,mental damage and economic loss.The reduction of social evaluation is a necessary condition for infringement.In judicial practice,the court generally recognizes that the judgment of the reduction of social evaluation needs to be compared with the original social evaluation of the plaintiff,but there are also certain problems: "The third party knows" as the main determination of social evaluation reduction,mental damage and economic loss Standards,the boundaries of the determination of the three types of damage results are vague,and there is no standard for the determination of the amount of compensation for mental damage and economic loss.Regarding the elements of causality,there are two key points in its determination: one is whether the communication behavior is directed to a specific party;the other is the determination of the causal relationship between the report and the damage result under the multi-cause and one-cause situation.In judicial practice,the communication behavior is directed to specific parties with the "third person familiar with the plaintiff" as the standard;when the target of the report is an unspecified number of groups,there is still inconsistency in the determination of whether the report is directed to the plaintiff;The determination of the relationship follows the theory of considerable causality and attaches importance to the principle of multiple causes and one effect.The overall applicable frequency of the liability constituent elements has the following characteristics: the illegal constituents are the most frequently cited liability constituents of the court;the combination of the frequency of judgments that appears more frequently is “illegal acts + faults”.In more than 75% of cases,The court did not fully mention the four elements of tort liability.In addition,by comparing with the reputation infringement results of scholars in the past,it has been found that in recent years,the high media failure rate in media defamation lawsuits has changed.There are two main reasons: First,the court 's awareness of protecting media freedom of speech is increasing.The determination of illegal behavior has shifted from "whether the content is true" to "whether there is a source of information that can be reasonably believed as facts",and the determination of the fault elements from "true content" to "interview truth";The burden of proof of therequirements has changed.The author makes recommendations based on the research situation: the judicial side should improve the relevant rules and introduce guiding cases;establish a public figure system;introduce social investigation laws and third-party professional institutions;make suggestions to the news media: report should be objective and fair,and give reasonable attention Obligation;strengthen the awareness of evidence and pay attention to the retention of evidence.