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Jocelyn Perez
ENN191
Professor Klages
Fall 1 2008
Censorship: Helps the Government, Hurts Us
When we turn on our television sets, and tune in to our routine newscasts, we do not realize the
grand forces at work bringing us a very filtered and condensed version of the current issues. The
public’s participation is necessary for a functioning government, and this can only be achieved
through a constant flow of information that fuels their support. But at times when public trust in
the government decreases, or when the news that is being reported could cast doubt on that very
“foundation“, the media plays a primary role in quelling distrust and pushing forth a brighter
image of the negative situation. How would they achieve this? One word: censorship. Although
the censorship of media content is meant to guard the people against harmful material, this shield
can obscure the people’s perception of the facts and keep them from the truth. It can make the
public shift their priorities from addressing serious issues to concentrating on things like
entertainment news. For that is what the broadcasts have become, a war of the most entertaining
updates, not the most researched and certified facts. When it comes down to the news, “just five
corporations rule”(IPS/GIN) our airways. We see what the broadcasting corporations want us to
see.
The term censorship, according to the American Library Association, is defined as “the
suppression of ideas and information that certain persons -- individuals, groups or government
officials -- find objectionable or dangerous.” (Culture Shock) This type of information may fall
under the category of obscene, offensive or even detrimental to national security, so those at the
top are careful not to expose us to any unnecessary grief or panic; or so they say. Profanity,
derogatory terms, nudity, and severely violent or bloody footage comprise just some of the
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content that is considered malicious in mainstream television. However, it seems that broadcasts
and news articles have been carefully scanned before release in order to conceal “what is simply
convenient” (Davis). This regulation of subject matter oversteps the intended boundaries of
censorship, and encroaches on our rights of free speech and press.
The first amendment of the Bill of Rights states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the
government for a redress of grievances.” (Ginsberg 114) We are guaranteed the right to voice our
thoughts and opinions, and the ability to use the press as a medium to relay those messages.
The manner in which we express ourselves through our freedom of speech can manifest itself
in different forms, such as “political speech…symbolic speech, speech plus,” (Ginsberg, 124)
and defamatory speech, such as slander or libel, that is not considered protected because of the
statements’ false standing and harmful intent. Political speech is apparently protected even when
the content is false, as long as the person saying or writing it is “in the course of official business,
or…against people in the public eye.”(Ginsberg 122) We are also free to express symbolic
forms of speech like “burning the flag“, (Ginsberg, 124) which has yet to become illegalized.
Finally, speech plus describes all forms of protest speech that is coupled with direct action, like
marches or sit-ins. Although these various forms of speech are designated as protected and
unprotected, the government’s role in its regulation would be thought of as minimal.
Unfortunately, the reality proves contrary. Censorship keeps us from exercising our rights and
gives someone else the power to dictate which of our messages can be heard and which will be
restrained.
Our government “neither owns nor controls the communications networks, but it does regulate
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the content and ownership of the broadcast media” (Ginsberg 242). It is able to do so through the
FCC, or the Federal Communications Commission. The organization was founded in the 1930’s
and ever since, has maintained our airways free of profanity and offensive content. It controlled
all television and radio broadcasts through licenses and regulations, such as the “equal time
rule…and the right of rebuttal.” (Ginsberg 243) The equal time rule enforces all broadcasters to
provide political candidates with equal airtime to express their viewpoints and objectives. Then,
the right of rebuttal secures an individual’s right to give a response to a personal attack while on
the air. Apparently, in the 1980’s the FCC tried to push forth a regulation called the fairness
doctrine, that would secure time on broadcasts addressing controversial issues to receive
opposing feedback, but it was denied.
Although the government can control our airways to a certain extent, the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 opened the doors to corporations and telephone companies to compete for ownership
of the broadcasting organizations. Since then, through buyouts and mergers, the ‘Big Five’
became the owners of our media. “Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation,
Bertelmann’s of Germany and Viacom,”
(Media Reform Information Center) formerly known as CBS, head our broadcasts, filtering and
molding the messages we receive. We see what thye are willing to show us and release only
enough information as to not inconvenience them.
The Telecommunications Act also hoped to establish better regulation of the Internet. The
Communications Decency Act, which was outlined in the original policy would prohibit access
to sexual material on the internet to individuals who were not eighteen years of age or older. This
unfortunately does not stop minors from retrieving such content online. It has applied however
to online videos, such as those seen on Youtube.com, where clips are banned from the site or
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made unavailable in the country.
Media censorship can prove to be detrimental to social consciousness. There is actually silence
in our everyday media; a lid on reality. One broadcaster stated that “journalists can make [this]
silence dangerous.” (IPS/GIN) The once free press and people’s speech is being edited on the
cutting room floor and lies are streaming through our televisions, only spreading the ignorance.
The broadcasts can be used to keep the people obedient by deterring the public from the truly
relevant issues. The facts have often been undermined in order to attain entertainment value. The
competition that exists between news stations calls for petty attempts to hold onto the viewers by
“reporting the exact same story at the very same time” (Shah) with flashy headlines and so-called
exclusive footage. The people are fed biases and misconceptions, but accept them as the truth
because the news has always been considered a credible source of information. The media
thrives on our trust and ignorance, and it is often used to serve the interest of elite.
It has also been argued that these outlets have also been used to gain the public’s support for
the government’s ventures. Because the media shapes our culture to the point of molding public
opinion, it has been used to target unsuspecting audiences in return for desired responses. Post
September 11th, the people lived in fear of another imminent terrorist attack. The corporations
and the government fed off of their raw emotion and used the media to evoke fear in the masses.
Even though President George Bush has official reports stating otherwise, he addressed the
nation and claimed that we were to engage in war with Iraq in order to thwart a terrorist threat
and search for weapons of mass destruction. This only added to the people’s fear and unrest, so
the masses began to support the invasion unaware of the true “aim: to capture a oil-rich country
and to control the Middle East.” (IPS/GIN)
While the elite wield the definitive power over the media, it seems that the reporters
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themselves have made efforts to censor their findings. Self-censorship stems from the belief that
the readers are not interested in learning about the facts. However, unawareness does not
constitute disinterest. Reporters, who are overseas in Iraq recording soldiers’ efforts to seize
control, have admitted dismissing stories because they “do not want to write back home about
sick children,…DU dust [that] can be spread in battles and lead to serious illness in
humans,…the number of cancer patients…and that strange vegetables have begun to appear in
the market” (IPS/GIN). The journalists seem more interested in maintaining their readers
captivated by ignorance than subject themselves to scrutiny.
Thankfully, not all of the American public has been converted to a mass of mindless sheep.
There have been stands against the media tyrants, and organizations have been established to
resist their influences and offer access to unregulated information. One example, is Howard
Stern’s transition from K-Rock to Sirius satellite radio. Stern was a notorious offender of the
FCC’s regulations and “since 1990, nearly half the $5 million in fines levied by the agency”
(Ginsberg 243) had his name on them. Sirius does not answer to the FCC , which allows Stern’s
antics to go unrestrained.
The National Coalition Against Censorship is an agency that advocates against the regulation of
literature, speech, and the internet. Armed with legal jargon, they outline cases for each of their
individual causes, in which people have overstepped the boundaries censorship and violated our
freedoms. One example from their collection is an article about a high school principal that
seized an edition of the school newspaper “in Wellington, FL…over an article about sex,
claiming the she was doing ‘what was best for the student body.’” Acts like these are recorded
and only support the agency’s efforts to do away with imposed suppression. These united fronts
represent the body of people that are aware of the injustices that done everyday, and they try to
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spread awareness concerning this wrongdoing to the ill-informed.
The majority’s perception is obscured by media censorship. It seems that serious issues have
come to only comprise about four minutes of an entire hour-long broadcast. This offsets the
people’s priorities and keeps them from addressing the real problems that exist, other than
something like an artist’s meltdown. This disorganization and blindness allows the media to keep
the public compliant and somewhat predictable. Those who try to break the silence that
encompasses our airstreams have done so in order to once again grab hold of the freedoms that
have so quietly slipped away. They protest in order to guarantee that our voices be heard and that
our awareness of reality be untainted. A constant flow of information keeps the people active in
society, and our country was built on the very idea of being a sovereign nation. The people gave
the government power and in turn, are guaranteed protection. However, as one philosopher said,
“The opinion of a 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything on the subject”
(Media Control). The people must not be manipulated in order to serve the interests of the
government, because without trust the government’s foundation would fail, bringing society
down with it.
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Works Cited
Culture Shock: Who Decides? How and Why?: Definitions of Censorship. PBS. 26 Nov. 2008
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/whodecides/definitions.html
Davis, David. “Unnecessary Secrets.“ Index on Censorship.10 Nov 2008. 26 Nov. 2008.
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2008/11/10/unnecessary-secrets
Ginsberg, Benjamin, Theodore J. Lowi, and Margaret Weir. We the People: An Introduction to
American Politics. New York” W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2007. Print.
IPS/GIN. “Journalists: U.S. media censorship is ‘rampant’”. Final Call.com News. 17 Jul. 2003.
26 Nov. 2008.<http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_896.shtml>
Media Control and Censorship. Third World Traveler. 27 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/MediaCensorship.html>
Media Reform Information Center. Corporations. 11 Nov. 2008. 26 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.corporations.org/media/>
National Coalition Against Censorship. NCAC. 8 Nov. 2008. 27 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.ncac.org/home.cfm>
Shah, Anup. “Media in the United States.” Global Issues. 1 April 2007. 27 Nov. 2008.
<http://www.globalissues.org/article/163/media-in-the-united-states>