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 Due to the great displeasure regarding the decision in the community, authorities rescinded their order the following day, and Youtube.com was once again widely available to computer users in Brazil.”1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

Nowadays, the mass media do not report the news; they make the news. Discuss this with references to recent events

The mass media includes the Television channels, radio stations and newspapers. With the entire world population dependent on them for information, it wields a huge amount of power and influence over how the people think and the perspective they have on various news around the world. The mass media reports recent events that happen around the world, including both fact and fiction in their reports. Recent events are not those that happened within 2 or 3 years but instead those that happened within 10 years as they are considered recent when taking into account how long the mass media has existed. I strongly believe that the media not only reports news but also makes news. Recent news report contain evidence of this.

Firstly, recently in singapore, there was a scandal involving the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) in which the chairman and members of the board were found to be using company funds for personal reasons like purchasing first class tickets for overseas trips and installing gold plated taps in the chairman's office. This caused a uproar from the public as they felt that they had been cheated of their money that was meant for the patients in need of aid. The media repeatedly reporting on the scandal as the public were very interested in it, meaning that newspapers that reported on it sold out quickly and news that reported on it had high viewership ratings. This meant that the media made a decent profit out of the scandal, disregarding the fact that they had damaged the reputation of the NKF and other charities so much that some members of the public even refused to donate to other charities when asked to.

Secondly, Just a few weeks ago, the government announced a increase in the salary of ministers and the prime minister. This led to much debate in the public if the ministers' pay are actually too high and if they should serve the country because they are willing to serve the country and not for the high salaries. The media gave the issue a constant high level of coverage, ensuring that they would enjoy a handsome profit out of the issue. I personally believe that the issue was blown out of proportion as a day or 2's coverage on it would have been enough and not for a week.

Hence, these days, the media make the news as well as they are driven by profit and not by the desire to report factual news.

1.“YouTube has no ethics, it's been created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money.” Do you agree?

I agree that youtube was created for the sole purpose of entertainment and money but only to a certain extent.

I believe that youtube was created for entertainment due to a few reasons. It allows users to post all kinds of videos, from soccer matches to home made family videos that have no meaning at all. This can cause opposition from countries and other relevant authorities when youtube hosts a video deemed offensive by them. An example would be in Thailand where the viewing of youtube is actually banned due to the presence of a video clip insulting the king of Thailand who is much revered in Thailand. Youtube has refused to remove the clip despite a request from the government of Thailand to do so. This clearly shows that youtube is created for entertainment as it refused to remove the clip which is seem as offensive to Thailand just for its entertainment value that gives viewers more viewing pleasure.

I also believe that youtube was created to earn profits for its creators. This can be seen from the many videos it hosts that are actually the work of other companies, thus violating the copyright laws. However, youtube does not remove these videos as they are immensely popular among its viewers, increasing the number of users accessing Youtube. This large number of viewers on youtube appeals greatly to companies who want to place their advertisements on a website where there is constantly a large number of users viewing the website.

However, youtube was also created for other purposes other than entertainment and making money. Youtube also hosts videos that help users like medical videos that help users deal with medical problems like autism and teach viewers how to sample sugar levels and use inhalers.

I would have to say Youtube was largely created to provide entertainment and to make money as it was with these goals in mind that the creators Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim started Youtube to provide entertainment to the internet users. They knew that if their website provided so much entertainment until the extent that it becomes very popular, advertisers would come knocking hence bringing income for them.

The teenage years are the best years of one’s life.’ Would you agree with this view?

The teenage years are the best years of one’s life.’ Would you agree with this view?

I agree with this view.

The teenage years are usually the most memorable years of one's life.This is during this time that we find our identity, experiment with new things and maybe even experience our first love or relationship.It is during this time that we experience major examinations like the Cambridge Ordinary levels or the Advanced levels.It is in school that we make friends and spend many days off studying with best friends at the library or watching movies.

The teenage years are also the time when people do daring things. Many teenagers have tried bungy jumping,kayaking , roller coaster rides and other daring “adventures”. These activities not only bring joy and fun to teenagers, they also develop the mental attributes of these teenagers.

I believe that the teenage years is a period of trials. The trials are not only in the form of examinations but also in the form of physical trials and mental trials. It is during our teenage years where we realise our identity. We would have also realised our sexuality , our ambition and our interests. Many people realise the career they wish to pursue while they are about 16, 17 years old.

However, there are also bad things that make our teenage years less enjoyable.

It is also during our teenage years that we follow trends fervently. There has been harmless trends like wearing ankle length socks but there has also been trends that are harmful like being “emo”. Being “emo” is to be expressive of one's feelings like angry, depression, loneliness through writing poems on one's suicide attempts or cutting's one's wirst to express emotions within oneself. I believe that following harmless trends is fine but following trends that causes us to harm ourselves is completely ridiculous and foolish thing to do. People follow trends to look “hip” which means modern but is hurting ourselves an worthwhile sarcifice in order to look “hip”?

I certainly do not think so and it is trends like these that causes dark patches in our otherwise colourful teenage years. Stress can also lead to us having a less than enjoyable growing up period. These days, we hear news of students crying at the A levels for “only” getting 3 As and students in various countries killing themselves as they are unable to cope with the overwhelming stress. Where does this stress come from? It actually comes from many sources, namely the parents, society and the school. Parents and schools encourage students to get good grades in studies. However, this encouragement comes in the form of extra practices or constant monitoring of students. This actually give additional and unnecessary pressure to the students resulting in many of them having unhappy teenage years.

Despite all this, the teenage years in my opinion is be one of the most enjoyable periods of one's life. Problems can be solved through effective time management, self motivation and the ability to balance both work and play, ensuring that one can still have fun and enjoy these teenage years while under stress. These are actually skills and ability that most teenagers have learned these days as they develop ways and methods to cope with the stress associated with growing up.Therefore, i agree with the view that the teenage years are the best years of one's life.