Censorship Essay
Uploaded by togden on Jan 18, 2012
Ever wondered the reason behind racial discrimination, sexual discrimination, children committing crime or violence? The main reason is that censorship is not properly imposed or there is a need of censorship in the society. Censorship is the suppression of ideas and information that certain people, an individual, groups or government officials find to be objectionable, offensive or dangerous on others. There are varieties of other definitions but all have in common the concept of withholding information and/or resources from those who seek it.
To start, censorship is essential in society to eliminate discrimination on basis of race and sex, to protect children, and to maintain stability and restore what censor sees as lost moral values. Moreover, Censorship occurs when expressive materials like books, magazines, movies, videos, music or work of art are restricted to particular audiences based on their age or other characteristics. Censorship is not a recent development. It wasn’t imposed properly or there weren’t strict regulations before. In the article “Hate Radio” by Patricia J. Williams, she states that “radio was a powerful source of media. It had influenced a lot of people. The power of media can change the course of history.” The host on the radio such as Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern were also influencing a lot of people. The theme was not merely the specific intolerance on hot topics as race and gender, but a much more general derision for the world, a verbal stoning of anything different. Most of the audience on this radio shows were white and male. Most of the callers have spent their lives confining themselves off from any real experience with blacks, feminists, lesbians or gays. Rush Limbaugh tells his audience “what you believe inside, you can talk about it in the marketplace.” Unfortunately what’s inside is then mistaken for what’s outside, and as a result, he or she is treated experientially which is also known as political reality. Most of the talks on the radio were being racist against the blacks. “This had influenced so much that a statistic showed that 53 percent of people in America agree that blacks and Latinos are less intelligent than whites, and a majority believed that blacks are lazy, violent, welfare-dependent and unpatriotic. Hence, this stereotype among the people was due to the lack of censorship”(Williams, 502). ...