Study On Rights Protection Of Close Relatives Of Suspect In News Reporting

The close relatives of the suspect(CRS) are a specific crowd appearing in the crime news reports, who are neither parties nor directly related to the case. However, in some crime news reports, the reporters also bring these people within the scope of the coverage, and sometimes even make them become the protagonists of it, which leads their legitimate rights being violated in the process of the case occasionally. Thus, it is urgent to find a reasonable way to resolve this problem. Although there are many researches on crime news, they focus more on issues related to the protection of the rights of the suspects and victims. Few researches have been conducted on reporting features of the CRS and problems arising from the reportings. Through specific analysis of the CRS, the present research attempts to arouse the academia’s concern and attention about the news reporting of the CRS. Some reasonable advice are given to better protect the CRS’s legitimate rights.In the first chapter, some related concepts were expounded. The discrepancies between some common concepts such as "suspect" and "defendant", "close relatives" and "family members", which often appear in crime news reports but yet can easily be misused, were clearly pointed out. Then personality rights were delimited and the several specific types of personality rights infringed in crime news reportings to be discussed in this paper were clarified.The second chapter mainly analyzed the infringement problems appearing in the reportings of the CRS. On the basis of comprehensive analysis of some typical criminal cases and related news, the common forms of the media reports of the CRS were summarized, which primarily include such aspects: showing that the family members place righteousness above family loyalty, highlighting repentance and apology tragically, and digging into stories behind the family. After analyzing the forms of the media coverage, the main rights of the CRS violated in the process of news reportings were pointed out, which primarily include the rights of privacy, reputation and tranquility, followed by relevant analyses.The third chapter explored the reasons accounting for the report anomie of the CRS, which were divided into external and internal ones. External reasons lie in the facts that the absence of legal popularization results in superficial public awareness of the law, the deterioration of the social morality affects the value orientations of the reporters. And internal reasons are summed up in two aspects: on the one hand, the media value profits excessively and lack social responsibility; on the other hand, although the discipline backgrounds of the correspondents are diverse, they are deficient in professional legal knowledge.The fourth chapter proposed some countermeasures for the report anomie in crime news reportings. The following five aspects are included: strengthening self-discipline of the media industry, making good on the legal news talents training, accomplishing special news legislation quickly, and improving the media reviewers and editors’ legal accomplishment.Finally, the conclusions were drawn as follows: in the current crime news reports, news infringement acts occur occasionally. But as long as the news media and reporters pay adequate attention to this situation and strengthen self-discipline from a legal perspective and moral dimension,the similar infringement acts will happen less and the legitimate rights of the CRS will be well protected.