An essay on censorship

Censorship happens all over the world in various degrees. It is defined as the "suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body." Different types of censorship exist, such as moral, military, political, religious, and corporate. Some, like military censorship, have a meaningful purpose for the military's country of origin, but others, like political censorship, use their censorship and power to exercise control over the population.

Censorship had early beginnings in the eras of the Greek democracy and Roman Empire. Plato was the first recorded person to outline what censorship would be. Mothers and wet nurses were not permitted from telling stories that were evil or bad, enforced by official censors. Emperor Nero of Rome deported people who criticized him, and had their publications burned. Censorship has evolved from outright banning of material—the outrageous censorship that Nero had put into effect—into discreet alterations of information to make it seem less serious than it is, like wartime information presented in the news.

Moral censorship is one of the most prevalent types of censorship in our society. It is the restraint of materials considered obscene or morally questionable, such as pornography, or on a larger extent, child pornography. General pornography is not illegal in North America, but it is censored to a degree; pornographic movies are not typically sold in storefronts, and inappropriate magazines often have black plastic bars covering any nudity. But in other countries, pornography is strictly forbidden. Moral censorship varies in different countries and societies. In North America, nudity is objectionable except in public places unless otherwise specified—such as nude beaches, which are rarer here than they are in Europe. Nudity is even frowned upon in most media, such as television and magazines. However, the opposite is true in most of Western Europe. There is less restraint on nudity—something that is so frowned upon in North America. For example, in the media there are two different publications of the magazine Cosmopolitan: one based in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. In the North American edition of the magazine, the content is fairly explicit, however there are no images considered inappropriate by our standards. In the UK edition, not only is the content similar to that of its American counterpart, but they do not share the same concern over nudity. The same goes for magazines such as Vogue.

Another prime example of moral censorship is the recent issue of Mark Twain's classic, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Many schools throughout North American cannot teach the novel in a book study because of the sensitive material in its pages: namely, the use of the word 'nigger'. Schools worried that students might be offended by the use of the word, despite a wish to read the book itself. To combat this, publishers NewSouth Books in Alabama replaced all 219 references to nigger with the word 'slave', as well as 'injun' with 'Indian'. Alan Gribben, an English professor in Montgomery, was the one to go to the publishers with the idea of changing the words, because he had always hesitated before reading aloud to his students. Although Gribben claims that he doesn't intend to, as he put it, "sanitize" Twain's work, many people are taking the new publication negatively. People claim that it is disfiguring classic literature by changing it, which it very well may be. Twain's work accurately and amusingly reflects the social attitude of the time, and that Twain had intended for the book to imitate the era; injun and nigger would have been common colloquialisms of the mid-19th century. It is a debate that won't likely end anytime soon, as literary purists and moral censorship will constantly be at each other's throats.

Military censorship is one of the more valuable types of censorship. It occurs when the military keeps intelligence and tactics confidential, so enemy states do not have information valuable for espionage and attacks. It keeps the military and homeland safer during times of war or tension around the world. Military censorship also includes information that is less important to warfare and tactics. If the military comes across information that is politically inconvenient, it will be suppressed and kept hidden from the public eye. During the Bush administration in the United States, very few people aside from those labeled privileged were able to see just what was going on in the war in Iraq. News outlets self-censored to keep the public from seeing the catastrophe and the military and government forbade images and information to be leaked. Caskets bearing the bodies of American soldiers and the identities of casualties were kept hidden. "Sensitive information", such as the death counts in the Middle East or the aftermath of an attack by the enemy, was forbidden from being released by the wartime journalists that documented the events in pictures. This aspect of military censorship is unfair in comparison to the first piece—keeping confidential information actually confidential from enemy militants.

The popular Nickelodeon television show Avatar: The Last Airbender actually incorporated military censorship into several of their episodes. In the Earth Kingdom capital city of Ba Sing Se, Long Feng, an advisor to the king of the Earth Kingdom, was the leader of the Dai Li, which is essentially the Avatar version of the CIA. Long Feng and the Dai Li controlled what information went in and out of Ba Sing Se. The citizens of the city—including the king—were not aware that for the past hundred years the Fire Nation had been making war on the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes after committing genocide on the Air Nomads. Whenever the war was so much as whispered by merchants who had been permitted into the city, Dai Li agents quickly and permanently shut them up. The public deserves to know what's going on in whatever war their country is part of, at least to some degree, and this was even proven in a television show.

Another type of censorship that ties in with the above is that of politics. Governments routinely keep information away from their citizens. It is primarily done to keep control over the population, and stave off any movement that might one day turn into rebellion. Political censorship has been around for hundreds of years; an early example comes from the 17th century, after the printing press was invented. The English Crown made laws so printing could only happen with licenses, and it was enforced by the Licensing Act of 1662. In 1695, after the House of Commons didn't renew the act, the censorship of the press was over except during wartime, à la military censorship. One notable example of modern political censorship is that of the Chinese government. Founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange was quoted as saying Beijing has "aggressive and sophisticated interception technology that places itself between every reader inside China and every information source outside China," and that the website itself has been "fighting a running battle to make sure we can get information through" to Chinese citizens. The censorship of the Internet is one of the largest cases of censorship in China. Many different laws and regulations control the use of the Internet. Although in Hong Kong and Macau the laws don't apply, in the rest of the People's Republic of China, there is an Internet police whose numbers are guessed to be around 50 000. They monitor chat rooms and instant messengers, and if anything hate-related or inappropriate appears on these forums, the Internet police delete it within a matter of minutes. Amnesty International can be quoted as saying that China "has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world" because of their strict rules around censorship and what information the government believes the public deserves or needs to see.

Religious censorship also ties in to some degree with military and political. Military and religious censorship often go hand-in-hand—take the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule that was implemented in the American army, because of a homophobia that likely developed because of a large number of religious beliefs all across the country. Religious censorship is described as being the removal of material that is considered objectionable by any certain faith. This has been the cause of many wars throughout history—most prominently the historic Crusades, in which God-fearing Templars and Teutonic Knights battled against the Muslims to take control of the Holy Land: Jerusalem. As well, when science became a popular notion, the Catholic Church considered it to be heresy, evil against the word of God. Scientists were proclaimed evil and disposed of without the rest of the world aware of what was really going on. But religious censorship does not always result in war and death. Even something as simple as the Ten Commandments is a type of censorship. Not permitting worshippers to change the image of the Lord, for example, is a way of controlling how Jesus is portrayed in Biblical art and the like. Though all manner of religions have their own array of censorship, the Catholic Church is most notorious for their past in censorship. Looking down on homosexuals, not allowing contraceptives during sex, and excommunicating nuns who have committed life-saving abortions for sick mothers are all common practices for the Catholic Church and their censorship.

Corporate censorship is when businesses and corporations try to cover up bad publicity, and to keep people from viewing them negatively. Corporate censorship is often considered a type of self-censorship, much like the case of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. One such example of this is one 1998 episode of the popular television show Saturday Night Live. The comics of the show made a satire out of corporate censorship with a song that stated, "Disney, Fox, Westinghouse, and good ol' GE" own "networks from CBS to CNBC" and "can use them to say whatever they please and put down the opinions of anyone who disagrees". However, there is irony in the episode: due to a self-perceived lack of humour in the particular skit, it was removed for any ensuing repeats of the episode, and because General Electric and NBC were insulted by the supposed humour in the situation. Much the same as moral censorship, corporate censorship often keeps out things that people find offensive, such as blurring mouths and "bleeping" curse words for television, and making sure that subsidiaries of a larger company don't do something that would give out a bad name to the corporation as a whole. In the music industry in 2003, the Dixie Chicks were banned from radio stations and public events due to their blatant insulting of President Bush. Companies did not want to be seen as sympathetic to the Dixie Chicks, or treasonous toward their president, so their music was forbidden to keep the company's public face clean.

There are many different types of censorship all over the world, and to varying degrees. With moral, military, political, religious, and corporate censorship all in effect through societies across the globe, the public is controlled by those in higher positions to keep important information secret or to protect those in the country. Censorship can be advantageous or damaging to society, depending on the type and how strictly they are enforced.

Censorship applies to all three sociological perspectives: functionalist, conflict, and interactionist. In many societies censorship helps the people stay stable and function properly. It keeps the public in line for important things—like the illegality of child pornography. The censorship of these things considered immoral protects innocent lives, and keeps many children from being taken advantage of. However, functionalist censorship is much rarer than conflict. People all over the world oppose the severity and common usage of censorship, and believe it is unfair to keep information from the public eye. Even in our relatively uncensored North American world, we find it wrong that the government, militaries, and religious institutions would keep valuable information in their own clandestine little world, or impose strict laws to keep us from breaking any rules they might have—like those of the Ten Commandments. There is much conflict in the world of censorship; however there are interactions as well. The interactionist perspective ties into censorship because of the different states and extremes of control throughout the world. In North America, the censorship imposed upon us is relatively slack compared to, say, Asia, and especially China. They have stringent regulations on what may be posted and viewed on the Internet, whereas people in Canada and the United States have much more free reign over what we blog and post. Hate crime is still not tolerated; however the parameters of it are less severe than in China. And despite how moderately we are censored compared to China, we are still far more censored than the rest of Europe. The governments and media of Europe are relaxed about things like pornography and sexual exposure; nudity is much more common in Europe than it is anywhere else in the world, whether in public beaches, media, or red light districts. Censorship is something our global society needs, but only to a moderate degree, to protect lives and countries. Total banning of Internet use and media outlets is taking it a step too far.