Legal Express can clearly answer your questions about news infringement. News infringement can be said to be a special type of infringement. Its special feature is that it involves the conflict and confrontation of two different interests. That is, the conflict and confrontation between the interests of the public and individual citizens in news activities determine that news infringement has legal characteristics that are different from ordinary infringements. I believe that in order to legally define civil liability for news infringement, we must first recognize and grasp the following legal characteristics of news infringement.
1. Infringement occurs in the process of news dissemination
In addition to disseminating news information, the activities of the news media are also responsible for disseminating a large amount of non-news information. For example, the editorial department is engaged in advertising activities, and the editors and reporters are engaged in private business activities. In addition, some functional departments within the news media, such as the distribution and sales department, advertising department, etc., engage in business activities that infringe on the rights of others. Even though the infringer is the news media, it does not constitute news infringement, but ordinary infringement. Therefore, the premise for determining civil liability for news infringement is that the infringement occurs in the process of disseminating news, including specific links such as news interviewing, news writing, news editing, news release, and news dissemination.
2. News dissemination activities have caused damage to the victim
The main object (object) of news infringement is personality rights (including reputation rights, name rights, title rights, portrait rights, Honor rights, privacy rights, etc.). It does not directly cause physical damage to other people's property or persons, but it does damage to other people's personal rights through public dissemination by the news media. Therefore, news infringement often has the characteristics of wide range of influence and rapid dissemination, and the damage consequences caused are also relatively serious. [Note 3. See Wang Liming et al.: "Personal Rights Law", Law Press, 1997 edition, page 172. ] Therefore, legally, as long as the victim proves that the news work is illegal (for example, the basic content of the critical report is untrue), without having to prove the actual damage consequences, the perpetrator can be found to be legally responsible for infringement.
The main consequences of news infringement are: 1) Personality damage. Once a news act constitutes an infringement, the damaging information will spread rapidly in society. Coupled with the public's trust in the news media, the social evaluation and credibility of the victim will inevitably be greatly reduced. 2) Mental anguish. This is a psychological phenomenon unique to natural persons; legal persons and their social organizations do not suffer from mental pain. News media disseminate information to the public every day, and enable people in different regions to hear the same voice and see the same images or text materials at the same time, allowing them to exchange ideas and get closer to each other. Facing the increasingly formed and expanded public opinion and social evaluation, victims of news infringement may suffer or feel great mental pain and heavy social pressure, which manifests as psychological phenomena such as sadness, resentment, worry, anger, and disappointment. 3) Property damage. Although news infringement will not directly cause physical damage to other people's property or personal life, infringement of personality rights can lead to indirect losses of related property interests, such as medical expenses and consultation expenses incurred by the victim to treat severe mental damage, and loss of work due to missed work. And reduce income, etc.; if the reputation of a legal person is damaged, it may lead to unsaleable products, fewer customers, and even millions or even tens of millions of advertising fees spent to promote products will be wasted, thus suffering a certain amount of property damage. loss. 4) Damage to intellectual property rights, etc. For example, copyrights, trademark rights, trade secrets, etc. of citizens or legal persons can also cause comprehensive damage due to news infringement.