The conflict inherent in balancing freedom of the press and the right to privacy invariably presents some controversial legal issues. In addressing the legal dilemmas posed by these competing interests, an in-depth analysis of the conceptual value of these two equally important rights becomes a preliminary starting point. Through its exploration of the history and development of the press and privacy laws in both the United States and Canada, this thesis examines the fundamental values enshrined in these two rights. The author holds that the freedom of the press contains no privilege under the law, but that it serves as the means to promote the public's right to know in a democratic society, while the right to privacy offers an individual the autonomy to regulate his private affairs. By analyzing arguments of "pubic interest," "public figure," and "public privacy," the author compares the theoretical approaches to and practical attempts at striking a balance between the interests of the press and the privacy of the individual in the United States and Canada. Finally, the essay proposes how these experiences may contribute to the construction of relevant Chinese laws.

No description available.

No description available.

The identification and examination of cultural information strategies and censorship patterns used to propagate the controversial issue of the caricatures in two separate cultural contexts was the aim of this dissertation. It explored discourse used for the coverage of this topic by one newspaper in a restrictive information context and two newspapers in a liberal information context. Message propagation in a restrictive information environment was analyzed using the English daily Kuwait Times from the Middle East; the liberal information environment of the US was analyzed using two major dailies, the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The study also concurrently identifies and elaborates on the themes and frames through which discourse was presented exposing the cultural ideologies and premises they represent. The topic was approached with an interdisciplinary position with the support and applicability testing of Chatman's insider-outsider theory within information science and Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence theory and Herman and Chomsky's propaganda model based in the area of mass communication. The study has also presented a new model of information censorship - circle of information censorship, emphasizing conceptual issues that influence the selection and censorship of information.