Censorship Essay

‘ Is censorship a good or bad idea?’

Censorship is all about deciding on what people can see and deciding on what people can view within the media. Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication, which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive or inconvenient as determined by the government, media outlet or controlling body. It clocks out content which mainly is harmful to people and it aims to protect children and vulnerable people by block and removing content from media to limit and restrict what they can see. The government can retain people from seeing content in the media by removing it and only letting the public see what the government want them to see. Censorship can happen on a massive level like that or on a more local level where religious school remove the big bang from the school curriculum so the children don’t have different beliefs on how the world started. Censorship has lots of different areas from black inappropriate content to removing content so people only know one way or limits their opinions on something. Censorship can be editing parts from television/TV show out, prevention of advertising, promote/restrict political/religious views, prevent slender and libel. Restrict information from people.

In my opinion I believe that censorship is a good thing but it depends on the length that is taken and how extreme censorship goes. Censorship is a good thing especially for protecting children. In our society we are in a digital world and children from a very young age are using the internet, because of this children are being exposed to material that they can access easily that is inappropriate for their age for example porn, gambling, violence. Children are growing up being show this from a young age which can be damaging to them growing up mentally. Censorship in this area is good as it protect children from seeing this content on the Internet and allows them to go on the Internet and be able to search and use it in a safe manor. Also censorship protects children from watching a film, which is not appropriate for their age. Censorship may limit, block the inappropriate content from films and put a age limit on the film so children are not exposed to content which is not appropriate for them to watch. In this circumstance censorship is a good aspect as its protecting children from content, which they don’t need to see and know about at such a young age. Another circumstance which censorship is good for is blocking content from the Internet, which may influence a paedophile or a murderer. Finding content on the Internet is really easy and you can be exposed to it in a click of a button. Videos/images of violent and inappropriate behaviour may influence these types of people even more, which then influences their behaviours on society. Censorship would block this content out and reduce the people who will be influenced by this and this may reduce the crimes of what the people commit. In this scenario I think censorship is a good aspect as it can reduce a lot of problems and make the country a safer environment, which a lot links to the concept of projecting children. Inappropriate TV programmes should be censored if they are broadcasted before Watershed this is so young children do not watch these TV programmes and get influenced easily into thinking that the for example a TV

programme contain very violent scenes a young boy may watch this and think that that is normal behaviour and its alright to be that violent. Evidently what my point is coming to that in my opinion the main aspect to Censorship is to protect children to content that they should not be exposed to at such a young age.

Censorship in some circumstances is not needed. In one circumstance books have been banned because they have been too inappropriate. For example Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs, this book was banned because it contained obscene language and controversial matters. I do not think this booked should have banned in this case. It’s an adult book in which it’s aimed at adult. If an adult wants to read the book and they have no problem with what the book contains then it should be their decision whether to read it or not. An adult should be able to make their own decisions on whether they want to read that type of material. Some people like to read controversial material for example 50 shades of Grey is a very popular book which has been a best seller in the UK. This book is a very controversial book and explores sex and S&M. People may see this as having an explicit nature. So why has Naked Lunch been banned and 50 shades hasn’t? In this circumstanced I think it is wrong that books are banned. It shouldn’t of been published in the first place and the publishers should have looked into the material of what the book had contained. If they ban one book containing this sort of controversial matters than why don’t they ban all books containing it? Adults are en charge of themselves and it they want to explore the explicit content that the books have it should be their choice into what they read.

Another circumstance where I don’t agree that censorship can be used is within the education. Within this scenario religious schools will not allow the children to know the story of the big bang and how the earth started scientifically. They will only teach the bible way. I think concerning the education this wrong because children should be taught both ways and be lead to make their own decision on what they believe in. Using censorship to hide theories from children in wrong in this aspect and it should not be done.

The world we live in now the Internet is used everyday by billions of people. The Internet can be very dodgy as it contains material that lots people do not want to come into contact with such as porn, gambling, violence, indecent images and videos etc… because of this the internet should have censorship to protect people from the harmful content that it contains. Blocks should be put on porn sites and other nasty sites that contain content which is indecent. This platform of media is the most dangerous and therefore should contain censorship to stop the harmful content reaching people and reaching children who are just browsing the net. Internet censorship in China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations. In accordance with these laws, the government of China has made more than sixty Internet regulations to put the Internet censorship in action. The Internet control in China has been seen as the most extensive and advanced then any other countries in the world. The government don’t just block access to websites but monitor the web use of individuals. In my opinion I think this is a good idea that the government monitor the Internet in a strict way because in the UK the Internet does get monitored as strictly as China. It gets monitored as if you put the wrongs