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Censorship in the Society

Nowadays Americans live in a technological era where we are surrounded by the media such as television, internet, or radio which are ways to inform and entertain us. By the past of the years, there has been a lot of polemic and controversy in the music, video games, or movies. For instance, in 1992, a video game called Mortal Kombat was released by Midway Games which consists on an arcade-fighting where real animated characters fighting each other showed realistic violence and excessive blood (Gonzales). These called the attention of many people especially parents and the government, and as a result, many entertainment media were censored.

Censorship is defined as “the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others” (What is Censorship?) Some of the objectives of censorship change the information and classify the type of the product such as movies which depends in their content. For example, if the movies have sexual content, it may classify like an “adult content only movie.” Censorship has many advantages like protect children from violent and sexual content or prevents showing secrets of a nation. Although censorship helps in the construct of a good society and safety of a country, it can be used in a negative way from the government, it causes lack of innovation and\, and creativity, and it play an important in role on the freedom of expression and the right to know ourselves.

Many countries make a negative use of censorship in the media especially journalism. Some of the communist-recognized countries like Cuba or North Korea censored independence media which are not from the government. In the article “The 10 Most Censored Countries” according to Committee to Protect Journalists website, North Korea gained the first position. “Radio and television receivers are locked to government-specified frequencies. Content is supplied almost entirely by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA)”. The worst part is they always tell positive news about the government and acclaim their leader; they never touched the problems that are affronting their country. Another example is Lydia; even though they provided internet and satellite television, the government blocks all the political sites and news. Furthermore, countries which allowed the free of speech like United States sometimes censored some governmental issues such as the Patriotic Act because government agents arrested many wrong suspects of the terrorism attack of 2001. Therefore, government decided to hide this type of information. While government sometimes uses censorship to censure political issues, censorship also can limit the creativity.

The creation and innovation on ideas from books, movies, music, or video games have a relationship between censorship. In the last centuries, it had been many censored material especially in literature and arts which were not appropriate for that time. Many authors might have been exposed content which were not adequate to the society, government, and religion such as offended material like strong language for this time or some crazy theory about religion like Darwin’s evolution theory. Now, some of these censored materials like books are masterpiece and accepted by our society. Furthermore, in these days, technology is increasing very rapidly as ways of entertainment such as video games are too. Movies and video games have been especially victims of censorship because new technology brings innovation in these type of entertainment. For instance, video game presents every time even more realistic graphics, texture, and physics movement which looks more like a human being. And it also includes a storyline which can be related to gangster crime or wars. As a result, the government created specially organizations to classify this explicit material such as The Entertainment Software Rating Board “ESRB.” However, some countries censored completely and prohibited some types of video games, music, and movies. This new type of technologically innovation can help in the development of the human being like the artificial intelligence in robotics. Another example, many communist countries has not involve any type of innovation since it was introduced this type of “economic system” on the country. Cuba has been keeping their old buildings and their 60’s cars thanks to censorship from the government dictatorship, Fidel Castro, because of the lack of introducing new ideas considering capitalist. While censorship can interrupt in the development of new ideas of our society, it can also violate our human rights.

Finally, free speech and the right to inform and know are always related when censorship is presented. Free speech has been always respect by the government in the United States; however, communist countries is considered a crime depending the way the person express. As it was mentioned before journalism is not respect in their work; they do not have the freedom to express their ideas and thinking. In Cuba, citizens can be punished if they express in a negative way according to their government which people are condemned to four years in jail. In addition, in 2011the government of the United States presented two laws to apparently fight against piracy on the internet: ACTA and SOPA. The problem of these two laws is they control and violate our rights of expression in the internet. If these laws were approved, many blogs or videos would censor because the government would have the ability all our activities on the internet. Furthermore, they can manipulate or censor all type of information which may not appreciate to them. For instance, in China, the government controls all type of information, websites, and instant messages and depending on their content are censor and block. In my opinion, internet does not have to be control by the government of whatever country because it is main media which inform us and express without limits.

Censorship can track in a good way the moral of our present and future society such as protecting our children from pornography. Yet this governmental rule is being abused by high chargers especially in communist countries where all is controlled by the government. In these types of countries, people cannot express freely being punished and does not have the right to be inform properly on what is happening in the world. Moreover, communist countries does not bring any new types of ideas and innovation which does not build a well –developed economic, socially, and political country. In the other hand, countries like United States also use censorship in a negative way creating false new like the Iraq war in the government of Bush. Censorship is a powerful tool of what we can do but in a proper way to construct a “healthy” nation.