“Censorship is the act of suppressing publications, movies, television programs, plays, letters, and so on that are considered to be obscene, blasphemous, or politically unacceptable” (MccGwire 4). Censorship should be enforced because it is needed into today’s society. Censorship needs to be used in media, hate speech, and obscene material. To begin with, the media has very negative effect on society as a whole.
“The mass mediamovies, television, and recordingsneed to be regulated, and not only because of appeals to irresponsible lust”(Lowenthal 19). “They have immersed us in violence as well, habituated us to the most extreme brutality, held it up as a model and surrounded us by images of hateful human types so memorable as to cause a psychological insecurity that is dangerous”(Lowenthal 19). “The only answer is governmental regulation, if necessary prior to publicationthat is, censorship.” (Lowenthal 19). The media has influenced young children into thinking that violence is acceptable.
Children learn acceptable codes of conduct by imitating their mentors and others, such as celebrities that they look up to. Society needs to set a good example for children so that they can build bright futures for themselves. The media is partly to blame for many of the hate crimes that take place in today’s world. “Perhaps you have seen studies’ by some experts telling you that depictions of violence do not lead to violent behavior. Pay them no heed. Even if true, which I doubt, there can be no question that brutality brutalizes.
It corrupts taste and poisons the imagination” (Kimball 20). Violent video games, movies, and music lyrics influence people to retaliate against those people that hurt them. In the past few years there have been a great number of school shootings. Many of these shootings were copied off of famous movie scenes and video games.
These obscene aspects of the media need to be banned from children. Children are still learning the difference between rights and wrong, therefore adults need to take on this responsibility of censoring what children watch, read, play with, and listen to. Hate speech should also be banned. “Free speech has a class line. It also has a class responsibility. One person’s beliefs cannot cross the line into threats of violence.
Free speech does not cover that” (Albano 31). “Those institutions most concerned with social fairness have proven to be the ones most likely to promulgate anti-hate-speech rules” (Albano 30). “Part of the reason seems to be recognition that hate speech can easily silence and demoralize its victims, discouraging them from participating in the life of the institution”(Albano 30). “If so, enacting hate-speech rules may be evidence of a commitment to democratic dialogue, rather than the opposite, as some their opponents maintain” (Albano 30). People should not have to put up with harassment by others. People should not have to constantly live in the state of fear because others are threatening them; this is an invasion of their rights.
“Obscenity has never been protected by the First Amendment, though today we have sunk so low that some people, no doubt thinking of themselves as progressive revolutionaries, have begun to argue that pornography itselfthe most primitive form of obscenityshould have the shroud of unconstitutionality lifted from it” (Lowenthal 151). Pornography needs to be censored, especially on the Internet. Adults need to take action on protecting their children from obscene material. Parental locks are available on both the Internet and the television. “Aside from the fact that many parents will not use control features, censorship is also crucial to protect childrenand the rest of usfrom men encouraged to act by a steady diet of computerized pedophilia, murder, rape, and sado-masochism”(Bork 68-69). “No one supposes that every addict of such material will act out his fantasies, but it is willfully blind to think that none will.
The pleasures the viewers of such material get from watching a thousand rape scenes or child kidnappings is not worth one actual rape or kidnapping” (Bork 68-69). We all need to take on the responsibility of making sure everything is politically correct. In order for all of us to live in this world as equals, we need to make sure that everyone is comfortable and safe. “The choice is clear: either a rigorous censorship of the mass media, molded into responsible republican form, with censors known to all and operating under law, or an accelerating descent into barbarism and the destruction, sooner or later, of a free society itself” (Lowenthal 156). Censorship will help to eliminate a great deal of violent behavior in today’s world. We have to make this world a great one so that future generations can live peacefully.
Works Cited Page Albano, Terrie. “Hate Speech Should Be Banned.” Censorship. Ed. Tamara L. Roleff.
California: Greenhaven Press Inc., 2002. Bork, Robert H. “Pornography Should Be Censored.” Censorship. Ed. Tamara L.
Roleff. California: Greenhaven Press Inc., 2002. Kimball, Roger. “Government Censorship Would Benefit Society.” Censorship.
Ed. Tamara L. Roleff. California: Greenhaven Press Inc., 2002.
Lowenthal, David. “The Entertainment Industry Should Be Censored.” Censorship. Ed. Tamara L. Roleff.
California: Greenhaven Press Inc., 2002. MccGwire, Scarlett. Censorship. Texas: Raintree Steck-Vaughn Publishers, 2000
