Arguments For and Against Censorship Essay

Paint this picture: You once desired to watch a Youtube video that you have viewed recently once more, and as you searched it up, you remembered that there was offensive information. When you clicked on the video, a message popped up explaining that the video was blocked, and more importantly, why it was blocked. Although the Youtube administrators most likely blocked this information, this can mirror the controversial topic of censorship. Government censorship is the act of the government blocking information from media, such as books, the Internet, and magazines, due to bias, inappropriate, or offensive content. It keeps the information across these sources in balance of appropriateness. Some believe that it can form positive outcomes to society, but others believe not. Despite the violation of freedoms, government censorship can be beneficial because it removes objectionable/offensive information and restricts societal threats.

Censorship is a controversial topic argued about on an everyday basis. Censorship is all about perspective, one side argues that some materials should be censored while the other side argues it should not be censored. Censorship has subtypes of itself meaning it is separated into categories. The three categories are Moral Censorship, Political Censorship, and Book Censorship. Moral Censorship is the removal of materials that are thought to be obscene, to better the public view. Political Censorship is when the government partakes in blocking information from their citizens. Lastly, Book Censorship is banning novels by the nation or state, in some cases a school, if a community finds it to be inappropriate for the public to see. All 3 of these categories affect a country or nation and their citizens. Censorship can affect the internet, music, and films as well (The Spectator 1).

Throughout history censorship has been primarily used to effectively repress a person or group’s opinion about a certain subject. Censorship is not only used in radical nations that are ruled by a dictator such as North Korea,

Censorship occurs when information is forbidden; for example, in books, movies, newspapers, and the Internet. Books are banned when they contain objectionable language, sexual content, political content, and in the case of government censorship, knowledge. Some people argue that censorship is necessary to protect children from explicit language or sex scenes, and to preserve morals or religious values. Those against censorship argue that historical facts shouldn’t be censored, so that people can learn from history. Opponents also claim that censorship invalidates their intellectual freedom; which the United Nations proclaimed as a fundamental human right in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Finally, censorship decreases the quality

Freedom of expression is a right given to fuel people’s imaginative minds that are occupied with different thoughts and opinions. Censorship is only an obstacle, preventing people from expressing their inner beliefs by replacing it with fake ones. Censorship actively prohibits and suppresses people’s opinions to speak up in society freely and openly. It restricts the common adult or child of any gender from being themselves and fighting for what they believe in. Censoring speech and expression only establish greater problems than the one attempting to be resolved that both prevent people from expressing themselves and cover the ears of those who are willing to listen.

“Research on the Censorship of ‘Brave New World”” Although being a subject of controversy for many decades, the novel Brave New World has survived the test of time and is even considered a classic. With that in mind, this novel is still continued to be challenged as it ranked number 7 in ALA’s “Frequently Challenged Books for the 21st Century” for 2011 (“Frequently Challenged Books for the 21st Century”). This list is composed of books that people don’t believe are suitable for the public to view. Another name for this, when the books are actually banned, is called censorship. However, should people actually be able to infringe on other people’s right to read books based on their narrow moral or religious views?

Censorship is the suppression of publishing information on the Internet or television (Naik). The government blocks only the content that is proved to be unfit for

Censorship is the suppression of free speech, but we may at times need to use censorship for

Censorship is oft used to mute freedom of speech and self-expression, which are human rights. We need them to express individuality, to differentiate ourselves from each other. There was a teenaged boy who came out as gay, and when he told his story, it was censored from his school newspaper.

Censorship wouldn’t just affect our society’s ability to express opinions, but would affect a vital part of our society, Journalism. Journalism acts as a check and balance on our politicians and the government. It provides a forum to discuss issues, and to have our opinions heard. A world without journalism, would be a world without freedom.

The idea of censorship has been a part of society for a long time. In her book Censorship, Judy Monroe explores this topic. In her book, Monroe studied that censorship is dated back to 443 B.C. when the Roman government elected officials to check the moral and conduct of their citizens( Monroe 10). This means that censorship has been part of

To a population of critically thinking adults, who are capable of evidence based criticism, governmental censorship is not only pointless, but incredibly condescending to their ability to discern the credibility of information. This is of course, to assume that said censorship was being performed to dispose of false information, rather than its usual use of regulating the propagation of ideas that some would baselessly label as dangerous.

Censorship is a very powerful method of hiding information for the sake of the nation and protection of the soldiers. It disallows the widespread of terrifying information and images corrupting the minds of people even though that is the reality of war. Censorship is not meant to violate the rights of humans as thought so, rather to keep vital information out of reach from the enemy. Religious sects and groups will not attack or become a threat to Americans if certain information that may seem offending to them is hidden, this way there will be tranquility amongst the nation and the people. Overall, censorship is meant to be a positive method of concealing informational only meant for the military and to avoid conflict between individuals.

“Censorship is the control of what people may say, hear, write, read, see, or do.” All around the word censorship comes in various forms, the four major types of censorship consist of moral, military, political, and religious censorship. At whatever point an administration or private group feels jeopardized by free expression, it may swing to restriction to secure their fundamental beliefs. Every civilization, including equitable ones, has had some sort of restriction when its rulers have felt it would profit the country or themselves. The type of censorship mostly found in undemocratic countries would be political censorship. “Political Censorship is used by governments that fear the free expression of criticism and opposing ideas.”

In today’s world censorship is a controversial topic. The great controversy is whether or not censorship is needed to maintain a particular moral standard. Some believe that there is too much censorship, and it is causing us as a united nation to be naive and uneducated, but then there are those people who believe that there is not enough censorship, that exposing adolescents can