Censorship

Introduction

Censorship affects our society in many different ways, it affects the music we listen to, the movies we watch, the books we read, and many other aspects of our everyday lives. Even though many might argue that censorship doesn’t really have a place in a society that emphases freedom of speech and the freedom to express oneself, but censorship is an essential and needed part of our growing society, its needed in the television industry, the Internet, and the music industry. Censorship helps to make our world a better place because it creates a better environment for us to live in.

Censorship is the regulation and control of information and ideas that are circulated among people within a society. It refers to the examination of electronic and print media for the purposes of altering and/or suppressing parts of the media thought to be inappropriate and/or offensive. The implication of censorship is that it is necessary for the protection of the viewing public. It is necessary to have censorship for the protection of the family, the church and the state. All forms of communication media have to be censored for example: television, videos, cinema, books, radio programmes, news reports, tabloids, broadsheet papers and the Internet.

Discussion

With new technology like the Internet, which is easily accessible, is this lapse in the control of censorship going to have an adverse effect on society?

To have complete control on every part of the media would be impossible. Opposition Groups on censorship such as Article 19 hold the view that every human has the right of freedom of speech, they say, "this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference...." (Declaration of the human rights, 1948(1). However, censorship is not preventing freedom of speech but it informs people of the content and gives them the choice of viewing the film or playing the video game. If anyone and everyone were allowed to give their opinion and portray any image that they wanted, it could cause complete chaos and anarchy. The freedom of speech would allow the more powerful and persuasive people, to easily intimate and control the weaker people in society. This would lead to far more crime and regimes that would ruin and take over countries. If death and sex were available anytime of the day and our children could see this at any given time, then surely this would scar them psychologically and change ...