Tension And Restriction

The study aims to make a comparison of five countries with different traditions in the regulation of press law and ethics. The main questions to be addressed are:1.What kind of state regulation of relevance to ethics in journalism do we find in differentcountries?2.Are there any state authorities or public institutions dealing with matters of press law and ethics? 3. What kind of Self-regulatory machinery has been set-up by journalists and publishers? 4.1s there a public debate going on about press law and ethics? What are the main issues in thisdebate? 5.How do state regulations and self-regulatory mechanisms work in practice? How effective arethe rules and procedures from the perspective of regulators and journalists? 6. What kind of conclusions can be drawn with respect to the balance between state regulation andprofessional self-regulation? 7.And finally, does cross-national comparative provide the current debate on press ethics with anynew perspectives?The study consists often chapters. The first chapter is an introduction of the whole study, and the second describes the theoretical framework and methodology. The third is a macro-comparative study of media laws between the common law and civil law systems. The chapters fourth to eighth are made up of five country reports describing their media law and ethics. The ninth chapter is of case studies. The tenth and closing chapter provides a final analysis and summery of the findings based on the earlier chapters.