Consider the merits and demerits of censorship and state your reasons why you think it is necessary/unnecessary.

Censorship plays a crucial role in channels of communications like the television today. Typically censorship is undertaken by govement, or by established bodies (religions or the mass media).

According to Britannica, censorship is the act of changing or suppressing speech or writing that is considered subversive of the common good. Also, according to the encyclopedia, censorship is the official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order.

Censorship is undertaken so as to suppress any sensitive issues like race and religion which can threaten the life and welfare of people living in the world. For example, a protest across the muslim world happened after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper on the 2005-09-30 last year. The muslims saw the cartoons as an insult to prophet mohammud and intended to humiliate a Danish minority. This shows that censorship is needed to prevent racial discrimination from happening which will bring about troubles like riots.

Moreover, in a multi-racial country like Singapore, censorship is needed to protect the rights and values of the different races in Singapore. Any mutual direspect towards a particular race will stir up tension amoung the various groups. If censorship is still not exercised, riots will take place, resulting in the country being politically unstable.

Censorship is also needed to protect the young and the weak-minded. Just as certain content should not be even accessed by the society, we also need to recognize that certain content (eg. secual content) is also unsuitable for children. We should pass censorship accordingly so as to prevent the exposure of harmful contents to children who are young and innocent. For example, movies shown in Singapore have a rating each to prevent a certain age group of people from watching a movie which is deemed unsuitable for them. Children are innocent, and they are too young to judge and differentiate what is morally right and what is morally wrong. Therefore, there is a need to control their exposure of things at the same time to protect and to ensure that no negative messages do not get across to them.

From the article "Does Rap Put Teens at Risk?" shows that teens who spend more time watching the sex and violence depicted in the "reel" life of "gangsta" rap music videos are more likely to practice these behaviours in real life. Also in the article "Rap music blamed for teen pregnancy" shows that adolescents who listened alot of music containing "objectifying and limiting characterisations of sexualityy progressed more quickly in their secual behavior" than teenagers who preferred different kinds of music. This two articles shows how a teen can be influenced negatively when he/she is exposed to a media with no censorships. Therefore it shows that censorship is needed so as to prevent the innocent ones like the teens from learning things that are just not suitable for them which will thus harm them.

Censorship is also necessary as there is a need to prtect the government interest. If negative issues relating to the government is unrecovered, it will caused a controversy and people will start to go against the government. Social unrest will occur as a result causing the country to be politically unstable, having no peace and harmony.

However, censorship may not be necessary too. Children nowadays are too comfortable with their comfort zone that they are not exposed fully to the world. The more exposure the child gets, the faster that child will grow. Therefore, without having any censorship, we will be able to know the truth and not be hidden from the face of reality. Moreover, if the information was censored, we are still able to get information from other sources like the internet and piece all the missing informations together at the end of the day making censorship to an extent of being ineffective.

With no censorship in placed, there is a freedom of expression where people are able to express their views freely without being controlled. There is no limit to what a particular medium can show and produce for the public to see. Like in America where freedom of speech is practised, with no formal government censorship of the news media (with the exception of decency standards for radio and television) or creative arts. People can voice their opinion freely unless there is a risk or threat to safety or to other public interests that is serious and imminent.

Self-censorship is the act of censoring or classifying one's own book(s), film(s), or other works, out of deference to the sensibilities of others without an authority directly pressuring one to do so. People are old enough to exercise their own responsibility and judgement to judge what is morally right and wrong.

Even though having no censorship may bring about freedom of expression where people can voice out their own opinion, they may not always be aware of what they are saying and therefore, to an extent, may unintentionally offend other people. Therefore i strongly agree that censorship should be carried out even though people are restricted to what they can only read, as it is only with censorship that can help maintain peace and stability around the world.

From this article "spilling blood with oil in Iraq", what have you learnt here about the media in the way they present what is perceived over what is real?

The media is a powerful tool of influence in the world today. Messages, news are all being conveyed to the people by the media. For example,just viewing a short Television advertisement constantly for a week can just change one's perception about a product. Many often believe the media as the media acts as a medium between the things that happens and the rest of the people. Often as such, we do not see the whole issue of things, but rather only the views of the journalists, so in order to see the full picture, we have to keep an open mind and read news from many sources.

In this article, "spilling blood with oil in iraq" it shows us many creative untruths the media creates for people to believe and support the Iraq war. Quoting from the news article published on the 6th April 2003, "it has always been clear that Iraq today was never a match for a combination of military forces that included the world's mighties war machine." yet the reason for the Iraq war was that they believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the purpose of the war was to find and destroy them all.

Creatives untruths were told, in this article, it states that " Among the bigger lies still current are that the war is somehow lawful, or at least not illegal, and that oil is not a motivating factor." But the irony was that "Yet the US oil industry has been an early and enthusuatic war supporter" Iraq sits upon an area which oil is found. So is this war a war to destroy weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or just held as excused to get oil from the country.

From this article, i learnt that with the help of the media, people perspective can be changed and tuned into actually believing the media of the things which are in the first place a bunch of lies. I also learnt that we have to source for more evidence and information before we can believe what is published by the media. In conclusion, the media is a good way to get our information from, but inorder to get the full picture of things, we have to explore different sources which will then help us believe and get to the truth of the matter.

This blog is delicated for General Paper!!