Conflict And Balance Between Privacy And Free Press

As one of the essential rights protected by the constitution, the free press plays an important role in the modern democratic society under the rule of law, and as a civil right, the privacy has been widely acknowledged and has become or is becoming a right regulated by the constitution in the international society. However, as the continuous development of the journalism, more and more news infringements appear, particularly, the cases of infringement are commonly seen in news activities. The protections of free press and privacy are both products of modern society as well as important signs of civilization of society, so the free press must be guaranteed and the privacy of the citizens must be protected. However, we may discover in the real life that people are requiring protections of their privacies while being quite curious about what is happening around so that their filed of vision in information is enlarged as much as possible and their spiritual needs are satisfied, thus, the media takes great effort to dig into all aspects of human lives so as to satisfy this popular psychology, owing to which the privacy of the citizens is likely to be infringed, therefore, the conflict between the free press and privacy is a logical result. There has not been a verdict in legislation and research of all nationalities on how to keep a balance between the protections of free press and privacy. This paper conducts a jurisprudential study on the conflict therebeween based on the obtained knowledge and tries to construct a coordination mechanism for balancing them. This paper analyzes the causation and manifestation of the relation and conflict therebetween, presents a view of coordinating and balancing the relationships therebetween from the aspects of value, benefit and criterion, and includes four parts.Part 1: on definition of free press and privacy. The definition is firstly conducted from the aspects of the contents, legal attribute and legal subject of the free press, and then the functions of free press in information transmission, supervision by public opinion and rights protection are discoursed. As for the definition of privacy, as the development of the days, particularly the expansion of private life field in modern society, it is hard to define its concept and scope of protection. Starting from the specificity, privacy and governability of the privacy, this paper discourses its concept, subject, object and contents, and comments on the present status of privacy protection in China, USA and other western countries.Part 2: relationship between free press and privacy. Both free press and privacy are essential rights and freedoms of human beings and are indispensable systems for perfection of personality; the free press should be limited by privacy; and the scope of privacy is limited by free press.Part 3: conflict between free press and privacy. As one right in the constitution, the privacy means that the private life of citizens has the right of avoid spying, surveillance, disclosure, intrusion and interference, that is, the citizens have the rights of selecting, controlling and determining their own private business, maintaining peace of private life and treating private information. However, the core of respecting and protecting the self-determination, independence and peace of private life depends on the maintenance of personal dignity and perfection of personality. There are always conflict and controversy between privacy and free press, which from one aspect, is presented in the dispute of intrusion from the press media to the privacy of citizens, and from the other aspect, is presented in the disturbance and collision on free press caused by excessive support of privacy.Part 4: balance between free press and privacy. The conflict between free press and privacy is substantively the conflict in benefit and value, and this conflict reflects the particular status of society. Therefore, "the news should attach importance to the privacy of the target people when searching fodders, however, the freedom of press should not be excessively limited, and both should be weighted and properly treated according to the extent of commonality and public opinion, the concern of the public, the condition, property and extent of privacy infringement behavior, and whether or not the victim will be known to everybody, whether or not the victim abandons the privacy, the extent of the abandonment, the extent of secrecy of privacy, the characteristics and the degree of the infringement, and the necessity of free press and importance of protecting privacy and other elements".