Press Rights And Benefits

This study uses the occasional and snowball sampling method to select all the journalists’ rights infringement cases from2007to2011as a basis to discuss the relieves of journalists’rights.This article firstly clarifies the following concepts, that is,"journalist power" and "journalist rights", pointing out that even in the special media situation in our country, journalists still only have rights rather than power. With the basic framework of public interest from Douglas F. Morgan, the article analyzes the main connotation of "public interest". The author also employs the Sullivan case from the United States and Fan Zhiyi suing Oriental Sports Daily case from China to explain the concept of "public figure" and "public power".This article analyzes the origins of journalists’ rights. Firstly, the Constitution grants the basic civil rights, including labor rights, freedom of speech, freedom of communication, criticism and recommendations for the Government, and cultural activities, which response with each other and constitutes the complete basis of journalists’rights; Secondly, journalists’ rights is recognized by the universal values of human rights conventions and international practices. On this basis, this article discusses two core concepts of journalists’rights, which are the right of interview and the right of refusing to testify, pointing out that the understanding of the right of interview should has a macro-framework as well as a micro perspective, while the right of refusing to testify is necessary for the occupation as a journalist.This paper collects118cases of journalists’ rights infringement from2007to2011, analyzes them and verify the following conclusions:Compared with the national media, journalists from provincial level (and below) media are more inclined to be infringed; Compared with governmental journalists, those who are from market-oriented media are more inclined to be infringed; Conflicts that do now involve public power are more common than those which do not involve public power. Causes are also discussed from several aspects like the distance of the media and the public power, impact of the market, degree of competition, etc.In view of the status quo of journalists’rights infringement in our country, this article proposes that the constitutional censorship should be improved and the potential for rights protection by media industry associations should be developed.