언론의 범죄보도에 있어 범죄피해자의 프라이버시권보호에 관한 연구

A study on the right to privacy of crime victim in Media

The victim's privacy is the site where opposing interests collide against each other. Like the freedom of the press and the speech, each individual right to the privacy is already implied in the Constitution. The Consitutional right on the privacy is, however, limited to concepts such as the privacy in the person's residence and the woman's right to the abortion, but is not applied to keeping an individual's name private. Nonetheless, the victim scenario creates a serious privacy argument because of the horrific nature of the crime, the victim's permanent physical and mental injuries, and defense attorneys' frequent tactics to expose the promiscuity of the victim in a process to gain her involuntary consent to the crime. If the victim's name is released to the public, she comes to face embarrassment, anguish, and scrutiny by her peers. The media wants to publish the information, but the victim insists that it remain private. When the government or the court mistakenly releases this confidential information to the media, three firmly-rooted Constitutional interests oppose against each other. The media's First Amendment rights clash with the victim's privacy interest and the intention to protect victims. Thus, a court must determine which right prevails over others, based upon the confidential information that the media attempts to publish.