Subsequent Punishment In The Regulation Of American Mass Media

Subsequent punishment is one of the important social regulations of all the media regulations.However,there is hardly any specialized,systematic research on subsequent punishment in existing researches.It is generally considered that the United States has implemented a typical system of subsequent punishment.For that reason,this paper attempts to make a systemic research on subsequent punishment in the United States.The study includes four parts:the first part analyzes the origin of subsequent punishment in the United States,trying to explain why the United States had chose subsequent punishments instead of prior restraints;the second part focus on how the subsequent punishment system developed in America,and explores several critical junctures which brought significant impacts on the system,and thus concludes the modern meaning of the subsequent punishment in the United States;the third part deals with the content and scope of the subsequent punishment in America,trying to find out when the mass media would be punished;the fourth part analyzes the tools upon which the system of subsequent punishment depends,from two aspects—the expectations and the reality.The study comes to some conclusions:(1)In the United States,the historical choice of the subsequent punishment,lies in the result of the interaction and combination of complex factors.These factors include:the experience and lessons of British censorship on the press industry;the tradition of public debate and local autonomy in North American colonies;the came into and diffusion of freedom of the press thought;the practice of freedom of the press in the Independent Revolution,showing great political value;the legal thought of Blackstone.All these factors worked together to build consensus on the value of the North American colonial period to the negative value of prior restraint system.(2)The end of colonial censorship,not nature means that the subsequent punishment was naturally established.The establishment of subsequent punishment was not done overnight,it was gradually established through the First Amendment in 1791,and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868,and several judicial interpretations of the Supreme Court of the United States.What is worth mentioning,the subsequent punishment was first established from the First Amendment;its connotation is not solidified,but evolves along with time.Its final formation of the modern connotation is that:it goes further of the general simple consideration of "punish after law",saying that the law may also be judged having the nature of "prior restraint".(3)There are several critical junctures,accumulated through these junctures to adjust and add content,ultimately formed the modern connotation of the subsequent punishment by a unique and complex way.The emergency of those nodes resulted from many factors,including not only causal factors,but also some structural factors,which were deeply rooted in the American political system.Through those factors,the paper point out that the Supreme Court had played a crucial role.(4)Moreover,the United States subsequent punishment had a content obviously turn in history,in which the year of 1964 was a turning point,was that mainly from the field of public to private.(5)Last,the paper discusses the three kinds of tools using to realize subsequent punishment;in which I found there is a disconnection between the ideal and the reality of the part,and thus thinking the realistic rationality of American subsequent punishment.