언론보도에서 알권리와 인격권 충돌에 관한 언론인 인식 연구

Abstract

The rising number of media outlets followed by numerous news reports is violating personal rights in the process, regardless of intention, and it now has become a severe social matter. In general, the media violates personal rights as it imposes more value on ‘the right-to-know’, invading one’s privacy as well. Since the right-to-know and individual rights are subjective and abstract concepts that vary from one another, people differ in degree about how much their rights are violated or protected, which emerges the conflict that this article is trying to discuss. In the research, thirty-five journalists - who are news reporters at a newspaper or broadcasting organizations or are producers of investigative programs - participated in an in-depth interview. The interview reveals the following results: (1) First, the participants had a similar perception over the definition of public figure and public issue, which is an important standard to assess whether the violation of personal rights took place. (2) Second, the journalist agreed that any breach of individual rights made during news reports is a serious problem; however, they put the violence of public figures’ rights over an ordinary individual. The perception of the seriousness of personal rights abuse differs by the length of their career; the longer one worked in the journalism area, the more gravely they thought of the violation issues. (3) Third, most of the participants responded that the right-to-know should be kept first when it contradicts individual rights, but 23% of them also expressed that the individual rights should be prior to the rights to know.