On The Value Of The Press Freedom

The freedom of the press is a liberty extending from the saying and press freedom, which is the application of the saying and press freedom in the press propagation activities. In the modern sense, the freedom of the press is regarded as a sort of system right, not only a sort of basic right, but also a sort of political right. As a sort of basic human right, the freedom of the press is the resource of people's wisdom and the foundation of the supervision of public opinion and the democratic system. Because of its value, the press freedom plays such important roles as democratic participation and democratic supervision in the construction of the modern democratic system. When the freedom of the press plays more and more important roles in the modern social democratic progress, the conflict between its value and other social value becomes more and more obvious. Only when the value of the press freedom is definite, the critical point of law to exercise the freedom is found, and the conflict between the value of the press freedom and other values is balanced, the freedom of the press can be ensured and becomes an important component to the democracy of participation system.This dissertation is divided into five parts.In the first part, the developmental stages of the press freedom value and the correlation among such relevant notions as the press freedom, expression freedom and speech freedom are introduced briefly. Meanwhile, the right of the press freedom is defined clearly in the modern democratic society.In the second part, the theoretical basis and the right dimensionality of the press freedom value, the social functions embodied by the press freedom value are discussed.In the third part, the legislative value of the press freedom is expatiated in full, which is represented by system value, right value, civilization value and democracy value.In the forth part, the conflict and balance between the press freedom value and other social value are discussed. This sort of conflict is represented among the right of the press value, public right and private right, then the principle of balance is put forward. The purpose of balancing the press value right and other social value is to construct a consummate press system.In the fifth part, some proposals are put forward to construct and consummate the press system in China from such aspects as the constitution protection, the press legislation and the self-regulating system.