Censorship

Censorship is the removal or withholding of information from the public by a controlling group or body such as the government and the mass media. Censorship plays a significant role in many things such as television programmes, movies, internet, books and music. Only stuff that these groups deemed fit and are not considered a challenge to thier authority will they be shown to the masses. In this way, they can control our mindsets and limit the knowledge of things that they do not want us to see or hear about.

One advantage of censorship is to hide explicit things from viewers. This includes gruesome findings, bloody scenes, sexual acts, violent incidents only to name a few. What all of them have in common is that they may contain strong or offensive images that affect viewers to a great deal. Thus, for the sake of the people's interest, censorship bodies deem it necessary to hide them from the public.

Another advantage is to keep highly confidential information a secret. This includes military censorship, which is the withholding of information about the country's military strength, defence and technologies so as to prevent the details from falling into the wrong hands. If there was no censorship, an enemy of a country could easily obtain important information and plan a successful assault to conquer that country. If countries all over the world started to do that just to eliminate opposing countries, an endless world war would break out and the word "peace" would cease to exist.

The next advantage is the protection of reputation. This is a very important issue as simple accusations would invite unneeded speculation. As a result, supporters of the person or body become suspicious and may stop showing support. This is most evident in politics, where the power and influence of political bodies depend largely on the support of the people. If there is no censorship, opposition parties may start false rumours defaming the targeted party and the government or mass media, having no censorship authority, can do nothing to prevent its spreading.

However, censorship does have its disadvantages such as it prevents children from being fully exposed to the world, sheltering them from reality. All that they see and hear are made acceptable by the mass media and governments, even images or videos that show horrifying and disgusting stuff are censored until what is shown is so minimal that children will only know what is going on by listening to the reporter or reading articles in newspapers, and even what is said or written has been thoroughly censored first. As a result, they grow up in a world which they think is full of love and peace and outrageous acts are not that severe, since they cannot see the extent of its significance as anything that shows too much of its iniquity are considered unsuitable for children to absorb and thus, censored.

Censorship only helps to delay the time that people find out about such stuff that the media or government do not want us to see or hear about. Now, with the existence of the internet, one can easily access censored stuff with the click of a button. For example, there is virtually no scenes of excecution by shooting or hanging shown on television in Singapore, but in Youtube, a popular website where one can upload or view video clips freely, one can find a long list of such gross scenes just by typing the word "excecution" in the search engine. If censorship is implemented with the motive of withholding information, what is the point of having it when anyone with an internet can still access what has been censored sooner or later?

Personally, I feel that censorship is necessary as censorship helps to maintain peace. The issue of global security is a major one and censorship greatly helps to uphold it as countries can keep sensitive information safe to prevent giving thier enemies opportunities to attack them. If there was no censorship, everyone would have more exposure to what the world is really like and children can break out of thier "protective shells" sooner. At the same time, if aggressive countries knew the weaknesses of other nations as there was no censorship over information, wars would be waged by the hour to dominate other countries, resulting in countless deaths as many soldiers and civilians are killed. When one is dead, would knowing of information that should have been censored be of any use? Hence, i feel that censorship is a must.

Spilling Blood With Oil In Iraq

On reading this article entitled "Spilling blood with oil in Iraq", i have realised that the mass media does not always tell the truth. The purpose of this article is to present that fact and in addition, show us that the media also frabricate more lies to cover up false information. Many people think that what the media shows is everything that is going on, and they do not bother to delve deeper into the situation to reason out what is right and wrong. These people can hardly be blamed for doing so, since it requires a high level of understanding and professional skills of in-depth analysis.
Taking this article for example, the media only tells us half of the story, or more specifically, the good things that they want us to hear so as to generate a perceived truth in our minds that the US was right in initiating the war and made minimal mistakes while fighting in it. Yet, if we were to learn about the other half of the story, the real truth, our impression of US as the "hero" would drastically change. Everyone knows that the war was started due to fears that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), yet years after the war had ended, these WMD have not been found. People will then start to think if it was folly on US's part. However, President Bush tries to cover up this mistake by continuing with his pretence that Iraq has the WMD but they are just not found yet.
This article has mentioned several instances of the media trying to cover up errors of the US during the war. For example, US forces have attacked, killed and injured Iraqi civilians but the blame was pushed to diguised Iraqi soldiers to taint the reputation of the US. However, there was no evidence to back up this claim. In another case, it was said that US prisoners of war were publically excecuted in Nasiriya and this information was obtained only from a single source and there was no proof to support it. Furthermore, the US forces had violated the Geneva Convention by attacking Iraq's state television station which was a civilian target, but the incident was denied. All these cases showed the media's attempt to defame Iraq and make it seem everyone was suffering under the tyrannic rule of Saddam while projecting US in positive light as trying to redeem the Iraqis and protect the world from the WMD.
The mass media has a great influence over people, thus they exploit this advantage by mixing fact and fiction, choosing what they want to show us and what they dont. Hence we should not fully believe what the mass media shows us as it is not always right.