censorship

My class recently had a debate in censorship and that made me wonder whether is censorship is justified. I googled the word censorship and got these information. “Censorship is the removal and withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body. Typically censorship is done by governments, religious groups, or the mass media, although other forms of censorship exist. The withholding of official secrets, commercial secrets, intellectual property, and privileged lawyer-client communication is not usually described as censorship when it remains within reasonable bounds. Because of this, the term "censorship" often carries with it a sense of untoward, inappropriate or repressive secrecy. Censorship is closely related to the concepts of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. When overused, it is often associated with human rights abuse, dictatorship, and repression.” 1
I cannot imagine a world without censorship. “In many countries there will be multiple liability for production of slanderous material, material which incites racial hatred. Where the author or publisher can not be traced or are insolvent the printers can be sued or prosecuted in some circumstances. The relatively small number of internet service providers (ISPs) should be made liable if they assist in the provision of dangerous and harmful information such as bomb making instructions, hard core pornography.” 2

Young children will be watching pornography without control. 8% of criminals rate pornography as their highest sexual interest. Psychologist, Edward Donnerstein from the University of Wisconsin found that brief exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behaviour. This shows how dangerous pornography can be. Without censorship, I cannot imagine what will happen to the world. “In 8 of January of 2007, Brazilian authorities tried to censor the site Youtube.com due to a video of scenes of sex between the model Daniela Cicarelli and her boyfriend Renato Malzoni, filmed by a paparazzo on a beach in Spain. Companies responsible for the access to the Internet in Brazil, such as Brasil Telecom and Telefonica, initially accepted the judicial order readily, and hindered access to the site with the offending videos. Due to the great displeasure regarding the decision in the community, authorities rescinded their order the following day, and Youtube.com was once again widely available to computer users in Brazil.”1

“During the Spanish-American War of 1898, reporters, if anything, led cheers for the military. Throughout World War I, journalists considered themselves part of the war effort, not independent observers. This pattern of press and military cooperation continued through World War II. But starting with the Korean War and then Vietnam, the press took an increasingly independent and critical view of the military. In Vietnam, more than 2,000 accredited reporters roamed freely throughout battle zones interviewing ordinary soldiers rather than relying on the often rosy picture of the war presented by the Pentagon. There were few incidents of news stories endangering U.S. troops or military operations. But negative press accounts fueled anti-war feelings back home. When the war in Southeast Asia finally ended, many in the military blamed the press for "losing Vietnam." Some Pentagon officials resolved to restrict press coverage of future American wars. In 1983, the Pentagon barred all journalists from the initial invasion of Grenada. Then in 1989, the Pentagon selected a dozen reporters to cover the invasion of Panama and restricted them to an airport in Panama until nearly all fighting ended.”3 Negative reports will make the situation worse like in the case of the Vietnam War.

“The issues at stake in this debate, protection of children, terrorist activity, crime, racial hatred are all international problems. If a global solution is required then it can be achieved by international co-operation and treaties. It is acknowledged that it is justifiable to censor where harm is caused to others by the speech, words or art of an author, all the examples cited above are clearly causing harm to various groups in society. By a combination of the initiatives listed above it is possible to limit that harm.” 2 Activists might fight for freedom of speech, but freedom without control will make the world a worse place to be in.


1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship
2 http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=83
3 http://www.crf-usa.orgIraqwar_htmliraqwar_press.html

The problem with the modern media is they do not have a sense of social justice. do you agree?

i agree that the modern media lack a sense of social justice. This is likely to be due to them being profit driven these days and hence they do not report the truth all the time or report only news that would cause more outrage among the people.

This website http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31743 , shows the commentary on the media choosing to report only the news that contains American mistakes in killing civilians in the Iraq war as they would cause a greater outcry from the public compared to reporting news about the more common American success in the Iraq war in saving people. This is likely to be due to the fact that if the media reports on these news, they would make a bigger profit compared to reporting the American army successes in the Iraq war as everyone would normally expect a world power like the USA to not make mistakes that would kill innocent lives. I believe that this is unfair to the USA as it has certainly done more good than harm in the Iraq war in the long term as they overthrew Saddam who was a cruel and violent dictator whose rule caused much misery for the people of Iraq. This would be beneficial to the people of Iraq in the long run and it provides them with the foundation to have a more democratic rule and a higher standard of living without any fear of the authorities.

Another website http://english.people.com.cn/200606/21/eng20060621_276040.html , shows the US media reporting false news about the Iraq war to keep the morale of the people and soldiers high. I believe this to be morally wrong as the false news the media release gives the people a false impression of the things that are happening in Iraq where anti-usa sentiments are on the rise and violence is widespread. I believe that the citizens of USA deserve to know the truth of whats happening in Iraq and judge if what their country is doing is right or wrong.

therefore, i believe that these days, the media lacks a sense of social justice as they appear to be blinded by profit making.

censorship can never be justified. Do you agree?

i do not agree with this statement as i believe that censorship can also be used to censor things that are considered "unhealthy" to be viewed by the general public.

according to this website, http://koreanfilm.org/censorship.html , the censorship board in Korea has been instrumental in reducing the level of violent and sexual content the public are exposed to in movies and shows. They make film producers blur specific scenes that are deemed to be "unhealthy" or inappropriate for viewers to see. This is a good form of censorship that should be practiced and is therefore justified.

Another website, http://ericnuzum.com/banned/incidents/90s.html , shows the various times during the 1990s when music in America that contained inappropriate content like violence, rape , self-mutilation and many more were censored. This is another good form of censorship as the young people are the main consumers who buy most music cds , hence to protect them from being exposed to songs that promote bad culture and bad acts, the censors and music companies have worked rather well thus far in preventing the release of such songs.

However, there have also been bad uses of censorship. This website http://business.guardian.co.uk/davos2007/story/0,,1999994,00.html#article_continue talks about the negative impacts that the censorship imposed by china had on Google. China banned the search of events in which it had done wrong like the tiananmen square massacre and this was against the principles of Google, causing Google to be condemned in the western markets. Moreover this censorship is not justified as it is fundamentally wrong as it prevents the citizens of china to know about the truth of these events where the government has actually done wrong.

Therefore, i do not agree with the statement as i believe that censorship can be justified if its done for a good cause and not to keep a government or body in power by preventing people from knowing its mistakes.

Racial discrimination

With the happening of the recent Virginia tech shootings, many of us have heard about how the killer Seung-Hui-Cho was bullied during his time in Stone Middle School in Centreville and Westfield High School in Chantilly. He was teased and picked on for his shyness and unusual speech patterns. This made him refuse to speak until a point when a teacher threatened to give him poor grades before he spoke. However, he spoke as though there was something in his mouth, prompting his fellow classmates to laugh and some even told him to go back to china even though he was not chinese.

This abuse that he bore with everyday in high school and middle school eventually made him hate his 'fairer' classmates, that hatred grew so much until the extent that Cho planned a hit list of who to kill before buying 2 semi-automatics guns and killing them with the guns.

Hence, i can actually say that the virginia tech shootings was actually caused by racial discrimination as the fellow students picked on Cho for his accent when he spoke and his shyness when he was embarrassed to speak.I believe to judge someone based on their accent or their skin colour or race is wrong, everyone is equal. If the students then had not picked on Cho for being 'different' in terms of accent , then the tragedy could have been avoided.

Racial discrimination actually does exist in singapore but not on such a big scale. The occasional racist jokes about other races are evidence that racial discrimination continues to exist in singapore. The racial harmony we do enjoy now is actually very fragile. We have to treat everyone equally to ensure racial harmony continues and also to ensure that a tragedy similar to the virginia tech shootings do not happen again.

We determine the Future

source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho