Information has always been a necessity of human society. In today's society, where information technology evolves day-by-day, and numerous as well as diversified channels of communication exist, information has especially become the object of public desire. To the news media, media is information, and information is the life-line of the media. As a result, the news media has a particularly strong craving for information. As in an information society where everyone fights for control over information, the news media inevitably fights with the government, individuals, and even colleagues for control of information.
Recent headline news about the government search of the China Times Express (
Reportedly more than one-third of legislators have signed a petition to officially request an interpretation of the Constitution by the Council of Grand Justices to clarify the boundary of press freedom, recognize the medias' privilege from revealing the source of its news, as well as an immunity from government search for related information. How the Grand Justices will rule with respect to the requested privilege and immunity is a question for which we must wait for an answer.
However, the legislators' request for an interpretation of the Constitution to protect the freedom of the press varies from the development of the US legal system. Whether the news media enjoys a privilege from disclosure of its news sources and an immunity from governmental searches has always been a controversial subject in the US. However, the US courts have thus far failed to acknowledge a constitutional protection for such a privilege and immunity. However, after the US Supreme Court ruled against these special privileges for the press, the US Congress and various states enacted legislation to provide conditional privilege and immunity for the press.
A number of legislators in Taiwan intend to propose a new law offering special protection for the press's right to privacy. The said proposed law is modeled after a law passed by the US Congress in 1980, after the Supreme Court ruled against an immunity from search by the press in the Zurcher vs. Stanford Daily case. The said US law affords the American press a limited search immunity through a protection of privacy for the work product and information gathered by the press.
The US experience tells us that to ensure that the news media is capable of supervising the government, our legislators do not necessarily need to request an interpretation of the Constitution by the Council of Grand Justices. If the Council of Grand Justices adopts the view of the US Supreme Court, just the opposite may be accomplished. If our lawmakers deem it necessary, they might as well submit a bill for public discussion and draft a set of reasonable game rules compatible with our culture and society.
However, as we focus our attention on whether the news media should enjoy some special privileges, an even more important question arises about just exactly who may be included in the privileged group. If we neglect the issue, then we overlook the transition in today's information society.
Rapidly evolving technology for the communication of information has not only brought on an integration of the traditional media, blurring the categorical distinctions of the traditional media, but also have given birth to many new types of media. Among the newly rising media, some provide services similar to those provided by the traditional media, such as those BBSs and Web sites offering coverage or discussions of current events or government policies, or passing on such information to the public through e-mails. Are they also members of the news media? We may be ready to grant special privileges to the traditional media, but are they entitled to such privileges as well? The traditional method of defining news media through organization structure is problematic. Once we turn to a functional definition, essentially re-defining news media, those who may be included in the group may be well beyond our wildest imagination, in view of the current and future state of technology for the broadcasting of information.
Therefore, I sincerely call on those wishing to ensure adequate protection of press freedoms to think more about how to save some developmental room for the digital information network and its users. Perhaps we should talk less about the privilege of the media, and talk more about how to ensure protection of fundamental rights for the general public. Shouldn't the China Times Express and Power News incidents prompt us to enact laws on government information disclosure, protection of confidential government information, and protection of individual privacy, so that the gathering, storage, and use of information will be subjected to a set of reasonable regulations? At the same time, perhaps we should also talk about how to establish a reasonable mechanism for searches by the government, and determine how to rationalize the entire criminal investigation system.
Lin Tzu-yi is a professor of law at National Taiwan University.
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