Essay about Censorship: Censorship and American Free Press

Submitted By natashastapp1992
Words: 1080
Pages: 5

The Worst Part about Censorship is You Can’t See the Truth

Living in a world where freedom is what we strive for and is the lust of many from outside our country. Not many know that what is “free” has small print. Being told one thing is different than what is the whole honest truth and yet lying or hiding things has become a game to us. Crossing words out or heavily blacking the words out makes it difficult to view what we are not being told or are looking at. What are they trying to hide from us? “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”(Douglas) Even our Supreme Courts Justices know that we are restricted to things that we are exposed to in everyday situations. The censorship was to help “protect” the people from the truth. They were hiding an answer that we all seek when searching for a very specific answer. Viewing a document that would be received after a court case for example has in most cases three quarters of the document blacked out. They don’t want the information to leak out. Then why don’t they just give the person a bag full of paper shreds? It’s not like they will figure that out either. Within the court systems there is a fine line between having full access to information and not being able to even view a document that doesn’t contain any black marks or scribbled out words or names. The special name is Sanitization. “When dealing with classified information, sanitization attempts to reduce the document's classification level, possibly yielding an unclassified document.” To reduce the classification level the persons of whom release the document covered in black ink should just give the receiver a black page. In that case they can reuse it for something that is going to better them.
The ability to view certain things on the multi wavelengths of media that we have access to today everyone has their own preference on what they like best. Some enjoy sitting down and watching the news, others like listening to the news in their car on their busy mornings. But as you listen or watch your program you soon become to realize that the cast of the show that your oh so cautiously watching or listening to is all wrapped up in a cute little package to make you think they are having a great hair day or are having a great morning at 5am. It must be wonderful to get up before the sun comes up and be on camera for hours on end. Or in the case of the radio listeners who listen to their favorite station and notice that they fill in the blank with a “child” safe word. Even the gossip is censored. No swear words ranging from f-bombs, the b word or even the s-h word. They are child proofing the TV, radio and newspapers so we don’t have to punish our kids for learning these “bad” words from other people.
The blacking out of words or giving a movie a universal rating of R to help prevent our children from viewing material that society deems as unsuitable for the young eyes. The way people raise their kids should not have to be bonded with the constant question of “is this TV show going to have sex scenes or swear words?” parents ask themselves that question because they want a family friendly show or movie to watch with their children or partner. In most cases censorship is brought upon as a wonderful thing so we don’t have to constantly ask those types of questions.
Whether it is the media (news, radio or the paper) we are constantly seeing what is “supposed” to be seen as interesting. In many other situations the media gives news to the people that the broadcasters know is going to interest the listeners or readers. The news for example may include a breaking story about a dog getting caught in a storm drain over telling the viewer about a man running avidly around a major city shooting people. Yes they may