Censorship – ‘the practice of officially examining books, movies, etc., and suppressing unacceptable parts.’ – Google

The main reason for censorship in today’s society is to manipulate and filter whatwe (the general public) can and can’t see or consume from various different media outlets. This however is a very vague answer, and there can be many different reasons for choosing to withdrawing certain things and making sure certain things are censored, and I’ll aim to discuss why might censorship be potentially a good and bad thing, as well as explaining the reasons behind why it is used in today’s society by the government and organisations.

To start off with, we’ll look at some of the various different reasons for making sure certain things are withdrawn and filtered out (censored) over various different media outlets. Political, corporate, religious, moral reasons are the mostcommon ones, for example the Family Guy episode “Partial Terms of Endearment” which was banned for its crude take on abortion, would fall under the category of moral censorship.

When discussing the question of ‘should we have censorship?’, various different things must be considered. It is very far from being a black and white answer, and to add to the fact that it’s a matter of opinion, I challenge anyone to actuallysolidly say yes or no because it’s simply such a complex question. One thing thatneeds to really be considered is the fact that there are so many different forms ofcensorship. It’s not exactly a precisely defined word when you look it up on the internet, and for that reason it can take different forms. Upon research I found that there are two main types of censorship, direct and indirect. Direct being the individual targeting of a particular piece of media which violates or causes publicdisturbance in some way, and indirect, which is more vague and doesn’t involve targeting one thing, but is more about filtering out content on a larger scale.

Within these two main types of censorship, it must also be considered the fact that there are so many different platforms in which censorship can occur, all withvery different styles of content, making for varying forms of censorship. A TV show with certain words and themes used in it for example is not allowed to be aired before the ‘watershed’. This is a simple way of censoring content, simply laying down the rules and saying ‘if it contains this, it can’t be shown before this time’. This contrasts a lot against other more specific forms of censorship in things like withdrawing a certain book from a library, or making parents sign a form that allows their child to borrow it. The point I’m trying to prove hear is that censorship really can take on vastly different forms, making it harder to define. For this reason, some types of censorship are made more prominent than others.Books are muss less vigorously censored than video games, and don’t have age restrictions like video games do. The reasoning behind this is that video games are a much more visually stimulating form of media. When a child reads a book, the information is presented to them via words, and it is upto their own mind to emulate what the words are describing in their own head. This in many ways is much safer than an explicit video game, which will actually throw the imagery directly into a young person’s brain via visual graphics (much more intense and potentially harmful for young people). Having said this, I still believe that we should make and effort to at least somewhat censor books in libraries depending on the context, as young people can be extremely easily influenced from a youngage, so teaching them the wrong values can be harmful to their integration within society. Sometimes however, library books are censored from kids for

more controversial reasons, for example Dee Brown’s ‘Bury my heart at woundedknee’ which was banned from various schools in the US due to it telling the story of the colonialization of America from the native’s perspectives. Many parents simply didn’t want it causing controversy, and felt that their children didn’t need to know about this until they were older.

In general, censorship is done by companies and boards which operate within certain sectors of the media industry. Some of these companies are independently ran, whilst others are ran directly by the government. Many might argue that having independently run companies put in control of censorship allows for more balanced and fair censorship, and means that the government doesn’t have complete control over what we watch. In many ways this makes mefeel more comfortable, knowing that censorship isn’t completely dominated by the state. Having said all this, part of me does think that having government controlled censorship can be a good thing considering we live under a democracy. The people have chosen to vote for our government, so you could say that by having government control censorship it’s more of a representation of what the people want, rather than what an organisation wants. I feel that balancing control of censorship is the best way forward, and to add to this, I feel that companies in charge of censorship should in no instance be organised for profit. A great example of an organisation in control of censorship whom after researching, I feel are good at their job, are the BBFC. They are in charge or enforcing age restrictions on films distributed in the UK based on content, and dono operate for corporate profits.

As I’ve mentioned previously, children are extremely easy to influence. This is due to them basically not growing up enough to form their own opinions on topics such as political affairs, ethical considerations etc. Their minds are yet to develop, thus making them easy to plant information inside of in which they will carry with them through to later life, often becoming implanted within their agenda as they get older. It is for this reason that we should be extremely delicate and sensitive with the information we give to children. In school, many would argue that banning certain ideas from the classroom is beneficial for the wellbeing of our children, and I’d agree with this somewhat. I feel that there’s certain things that can damage a child’s mental development if exposed to at a young age (as mentioned before). Things like teaching children about sexuality at a very young age, is it really necessary and might it have adverse effects? At ayoung age, it might simply be irrelevant, and you could argue that we should be letting them focus on growing up and having fun and not rushing this process. On the other hand however, you could say that it important that we keep children open minded from a young age, and teach them to be accepting of things like sexual orientation and religious views in order to equip them to become caring and accepting members of society. The argument about this couldgo back and forth really, and in my opinion it’s all about finding the correct balance between throwing loads of intense and unnecessary information at young children and not exposing them to reality and preparing them to accept everything that goes on around them.

Leading on from the point about children being easily influenced, it’s not only inside the classroom that kids can fall victim to influence. Media outlets such as TV adverts can be extremely effective at persuading children to want things. Thisis largely down to the fact that children are not yet intelligent to perceive the fact

that the advert’s purpose is to make money. Instead, they simply see a flashy new toy car with flames on it and want their mum to buy them it because it’s cool and new. For this reason I feel that on an ethical level, targeting adverts towards young children is essentially exploitation of their nativity, and this is an example of a time where I believe that censorship should be used in order to control this exploitation. I’m not saying that adverts for kids shouldn’t be allowedat all, but maybe implementing some sort of system that says what is or isn’t okay would help. The EU does impose some regulations in regards to children’s adverts including adverts being prohibited from directly encouraging the minor to buy the product or service, and I think rules like this work well in order to control and limit this exploitation.

Gagging orders are another interesting point of discussion. They are of course, another form of censorship, and involve a information about someone being legally withheld from the general public in order to prevent defamation, sensitiveinformation or personal information being leaked. In many ways, this form of censorship is needed, and people of many professions may require it due to theirline of work, such as police and military. Not only this, but gagging orders can help to protect the safety of young children. Another potential reason to support the use of gagging orders would be for celebrities, who often unfairly have their personal information leaked by the press, and I’d say that on an ethical level having gagging orders helps to combat this breach of privacy. This article from the mirror talks about a female celebrity (who’s name can’t be mentioned in the article due to having the gagging order granted), successfully won a gagging order case over some of her diary entries being leaked -http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/female-celeb-wins-gagging-order-5741935 Despite gagging orders being a vital tool in the protection of information and the general public, there’s lots of controversy around their potential abuse. Authoritative figures and those with money can often use gagging orders to their own unfair advantage in order to scare off witnesses for example - ‘they may be abused as a useful tool for those of financial means to intimidate witnesses and prevent release of information’ – Wikipedia. Some might argue that because of this, gagging orders allow for manipulation of information and corruption amongst those with power, but whilst this is an inevitable problem, in my eyes, it doesn’t merit the prohibition of gagging orders entirely.

North Korea’s communist dictatorship is a great example of censorship taken way too far. Every element of their citizen’s lifestyles had been suppressed due to censorship of the internet, tv, film, books and many more. Kim Jong Un’s reasoning behind these bold political choices is because he feels it allows for a more controlled and organised society in which the people of his nation are focused on their work and aren’t distracted by media and the controversy that comes along with it. I would argue that this kind of political setup is destructive and suppresses human creative ability and one’s ability to express themselves. To me, it’s a good example of how censorship can be destructive if taken too far.

Censorship, whether you feel that it is right or wrong, regardless of anything, does 100% prove that we as human beings are effected by the media. Whether on a purely subconscious level or on a more obvious level, we all are effected by what we see. I’m not saying that I believe we are zombies who consume everything we are presented with, but we are certainly effected. This applies to

all forms of media, whether it be a newspaper article which changes our views ona politician, or a TV that makes us laugh, all media affects us as people and always will. If it didn’t, it would have no purpose, and censorship would be irrelevant. We’re human beings with emotions and we interact with what we consume. There are several psychology based theories around this, endless ones, all with slightly different ideas but pushing them message that we are effected by media. The media effects theory for example says basically that the media has an impact on the general public’s behaviour and visa versa. An example of where this theory can be applied would be the ‘batman shootings’ as I’ve talked about previously in a workbook task. Theories like this tie in with the overwhelming evidence that media has an impact on us. Not only this, but advertising also has very adverse effects on us which may not be visible at first glance. I’ve discussed this when talking about children, but the same goes for adults. Although we may have the ability to know that adverts are designed to extort us and make money out of us, our behaviour patterns can still become warped by them, making us want to buy products that had we not seen the ad, we simply wouldn’t have any desire to purchase. This article at http://www.unenticed.com/english.php?title=influence+of+advertising backs up entirely what I’m trying to say, ‘While other people may believe that doesn't affect them much, what does happen is that they get to know about positive valuations, while negative valuations are mostly absent.’ Is a great quote I’ve pulled from the article, explaining how adverts have the ability to filter that we see of certain products and portray them in the best light possible.

To answer and try to come to some conclusion of the original question on censorship, we as humans can be heavily influenced by media. Not only this, but certain things we are presented by media can be harmful or offensive to us for multiple reasons, and it is for this reason that censorship exists. I’m not saying that censorship is always a great thing, and sometimes it is used excessively andrestricts our ability to express ourselves as human beings and creative people (eg. North Korea example), but it’s important to understand its role in the maintenance of culture and society and for this reason I am not against it.