Censorship

Censorship of media has always been a topic of major debate. While many countries have adopted no censorship policy and have reduced control of government

over media, there are many countries which still today continue to uphold strict control over contents of media. Its tough to take a stand on either side as

there are strong arguments and counter arguments. However I feel that censorship should be on the part of the people or consumers rather than at the part of

producers or the government who may try to control production.

A censored media means, you get to see what you are being shown. The choice for the people reduces drastically. Moreover such a control by government over a

media may harm the quality of content that will be available. let's take an example of china, where the media is fully controlled by Chinese government. This

means the Chinese people will be limited to the view point of chinese government only and would not be able to see/listen to any program that criticises the

government or provides a counter argument to a government policy. This is harmful for the society.

A censorship of content also demeans the congizance of the viewers. It has to be understood that a bad program or an offensive program will be summarily

rejected by the viewer sooner or later. Although this has implication on the traditions and cultures of the soceity but censorship should not be the answer

to that. Many countries like india censor TV programs to avoid, nudity, religiously offensive programs. This trend is evident in middle eastern islamic

countries as well. This has to do with the culture of the region. Nudity, blasphemy etc contents which generally offends viewers are often termed as normal

in europe while it is not so in Asia. Also we need to ask ourselves, have the society matured enough to depend upon the cognizance of the viewers and let

them choose what to see and what not to? This may be a very difficult choice. A religiously abusive tv program has the potential to cause huge social unrest

and disharmony among large multicultural countries.

Often a program is supposedly an offensive one whenever it ridicules a section of the community, or shows a counter philosophy or shows the dark side of a

particular faction. This may be done as a constructive criticism as well, which is good for the community. This may have been done as a brilliant work of

satire. But not everyone has the apetite for this, and the government may choose to censor such a program which otherwise would have become a brilliant piece

of work. Thus the government devoids the soceity in such cases.


Censorship in my view causes two major issues. One is to completely devoid the user from a counter view point which the government may block if it doesn't

agree to it, thus cropping the viewers spectrum. Secondly it undermines the viewers intelligence in judging between a good and a bad program. Government

simply has no role to play in it and should stay away from censoring anything. A viewer has a right to watch what he likes to watch and listen to what he

likes to listen to.