| Summary: | 博士 === 中央警察大學 === 犯罪防治研究所 === 106 === News media has been criticized as social chaos recently. Without investigating, balancing, and objective report, the news defamed the person involved the news, then the news media has been sued for the offense of slander. However, after announcement of J.Y. Interpretation No. 509, media takes “no malicious intention to libel or slander”, “the true news”, “the content involved public interest”, and “fair comment” as defense reasons, while the judges’ criteria for recognizing the offense of slander is inconsistent, the persons involve the news or media questions the judgements. The present study collects the cases that media had been charged with offense of slander between July 2007 and June 2017 to study and analyze.
Six findings are found in the present study. The first is that there are 317 cases for the offense of slander, a total of 634 defendants in consecutive 17 years. Among these cases, 331 persons had been judged not guilty, 67 persons guilty. The conviction rate is 16.83%. Of which, 225 persons belong to Next Digital Ltd., 159 in Next magazine. The maximum slander pattern is written defamation, there are 583 cases. The highest accused position is reporters, there are 231 persons. The longest litigation time took 9 years, the defendant is Business Weekly. The second finding is that media has three crime patterns. If the news has one or more than one of ten situations, such as direct maliciousness, unproven truth, the content just involves personal virtue, the guilty are judged. The third finding is that under four not-guilty patterns, including the news reports have no malicious intention, news reports are capable to prove its authenticity, the content involved public interests, goodwill to publish comments, and meeting with twelve judgmental standards, the not guilty is judged. The fourth finding is that media and reporters are motivated and capable criminals. Under Routine Activity Theory (RAT) and Rational Choice Theory (RCT), they select news subjects and objects to report. The fifth finding is that verdicts for media that violate the offense of slander produce the criminal justice funnel effects, the verdicts could be reversed. In the sample of present study, eight cases are reversed from guilty to not guilty, six cases are reversed from not guilty to guilty. The sixth finding is that the legal norms of the criminal code are a capable guardian. Criminal penalty produces four kinds of disturbing effects on (1) accused media people’s psychology, (2) they are afraid to go the court, (3) they are afraid to be judged guilty, and (4) they don’t trust media environment.
Based on abovementioned findings, the present study provides the following suggestions. 1. Establishing for the media organization, including (1) internal mechanisms for commenting slander; (2) Education training for staff in the media organization. The priority is to establish social media and ethics for media people, developing correct investigation, balancing, and objective reporting and writing training. 2. Suggestions for media people, including (1) the media people should equip with the news ethics, familiarizing the penalty standard for slander. (2) Collecting evidence when reporting for self-protection. These pieces of evidence can be used when being sued. 3. The suggestions for criminal justice system, including (1) establishing consistent explanation for the offense of slander; (2) establishing verdict database for violating the offense of slander by media; (3) establishing the fully open mechanisms for not to prosecute statements and indictments.
For the direction of future research, this study also puts forward some suggestions: 1.Suggestions on the revision of criminal law provisions include the decriminalization of criminal law, the textualization of the "true and malicious principle", and the criteria for reassessing convictions. 2.including the study of increasing population variables, the research on the journalist's labor environment, and further doing various related quantitative analysis studies.
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