The Conflict And Balance Between The Privacy Right Of Public Figures And The Press Freedom

The privacy right and the press freedom are both the product of modern civilization. Both are constituents of the rights and freedom which our citizens all reserves and are essentially for the establishment of socialism democracy and legal system and the maintenance of modern social stability and harmony. But along with modern society's unceasing progress. The privacy right of public figures and the press freedom are in conflict in respective development process. It's a regret that there is no mechanism to solve the conflict of these two rights in our country's legislation and judicature The research field has proposed some adjustment plans to the conflict between these two rights, but it still has some limitation. According to this, this article has made a research on the conflict and balance between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. The full text has divided into five parts:First part, introduction. This part carries on an analysis to the related phenomenon of the conflict and balance between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. And then it has summarized the research achievements of the conflict and balance between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom in the last few years of our country. It has pointed out some existed problems. We should differentiate different public figures, different news, different situation and so on the special details. We need to use the method of benefit-balance to solve different conflicts. Simultaneously it elaborated the theoretical significance and the practical value of this article, namely enriching the civil law theory, strengthening the protection of personality power, maintaining the the press freedom, consummating the public supervision and instructing the trial of practice case.Second part, the definition of the conflict and balance between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. The analysis of the definition of public figure is the theory premise to all discussion. Through thorough theory discussion, the public figure refers to the social member who is widely known and has quite high social well-knowness, whose words and deeds manner have close correlation with social public interest. We can divide the public figures into different kinds according to certain standard. The extent and degree of the protection of privacy rights varies according to different public figures. The privacy right of public figures has its own characteristics. Comparing with the privacy right of common character, it has five different aspects. Regarding the press freedom, this article emphatically elaborated its value on the foundation of concept connotation analysis, namely restricting the public authority and consummating the democratic legal system, perfecting the human nature with self-realization, satisfying the public right to know. Simultaneously it has divided the types of the rights to know and built a solid rationale for the following article.Third part, the conflict between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. This part first carries on an discussion to the relations between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. Based on the characteristic of two rights, there is a unification of opposites and mutual limit relations between them. Thus it has caused the conflict between the two rights inevitability. Next, this article analyzed the reason which conflict formed from four aspects , the characteristic of right itself, the legislation flaw, the media malignant competition, the own contradiction of public figures. Finally, it enumerated three manifestation of the conflict through the case, namely the conflict between the privacy right of politics public figures and the right to know politics, the conflict between the voluntary privacy right of politics public figures and the right to know society, and the conflict between non- voluntary privacy right of public figures and the right to know society.Fourth part, the balance between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. This part first introduced and appraised three proposals to solve the conflict between these two rights, namely protecting the freedom of the press first, protecting the privacy right of public figures first and individual measure theory, as well as the existing rationality and the limitation of these three proposals. It advocates to use "benefit balance" to balance the conflict between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom. Next, this article proposed we should follow four basic principles when balanced the conflict between the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom, and separately made a definition and elaboration to "public interest, benefit balance, principle of necessity" Finally, through massive proofs and analysis, this article emphatically pointed out, when the privacy right of public figures and the press freedom are in conflict, the balance mechanism to solve this problem must differentiate according to different public figures, different news, different situation, different benefit and so on .Fifth part, concluding remarks.