Is censorship strong enough in today's media?

Essay by chermadUniversity, Bachelor'sA, December 2003

download word file, 4 pages 4.0

Censorship is the control and supervision of ideas and information, which is supplied to society. 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. In these modern times social attitudes have changed and censorship has adapted to meet these changes but there is a number of groups that feel that censorship is an infringement of human rights to free speech and choice. 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 their personalities.

Censorship in Britain seems to be...