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Censorship in the Media is not Always the Government’s Doing.

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Censorship in the media is not always the government’s doing. While there are governments in the world that do control what the media is allowed to present, some of the so called free speech countries are not as free as they might think.

Countries that are not strangers to free speech are often ones in which free market economies do exist. Media outlets, whether they are in print, radio, television, or internet are all businesses geared towards making a profit.

Profit is made in two ways- through subscriptions/ sales and through advertising.

Unless readers find the content interesting enough to read/ watch/ listen to than it becomes rather hard to make a profit; of course, the fewer readers/ listeners/ viewers there are the less advertising there will be and the less that advertising can go for.

This can often result in an overwhelming focus on negative, disastrous, or inflammatory events in order to stir the people’s interest as well as a lack of overall quality in the value of the news.

Essentially, the people and marketing companies act as a form of censorship in the media.

Censorship in the media is most commonly done to some degree by the government in times of war, usually with the interest of keeping military activities secret from the enemy.

The government tried to stop the New York Times from publishing the Pentagon Papers (during the Vietnam War) by threatening to sue the paper for treason.

Film was initially deemed not worthy of first amendment protection by the Supreme Court in 1915; that position change in 1948 and led to the eventual creation of the standards which movies are rated by today.

Howard Stern, one of America’s shock jock radio hosts, constantly thumbed his nose at the censorship of the FCC on his show resulting in a number of fines.

Perhaps one of the more drastic forms of censorship in the media would be the ‘great firewall of China’ which heavily regulates the content on the internet (filtering out over 18000 sites).

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Censorship Gone Too Far

Thanks to Janet Jackson’s infamous Super Bowl halftime show, television stations around the country are nervous about pushing the limits and being hit with a fine from the FCC.

This paranoia went too far in November of 2003 when many ABC affiliates refused to show the movie Saving Private Ryan because they were afraid of being fined for the graphic violence and profanity present in the movie.

It did not seem to matter to them that the movie had been shown on network television before without any fines being levied.

The fear and paranoia caused by censorship in the media (due to a stupid act) kept a movie that depicts the brave American soldier in action form being seen by many.

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No Gays!!!

An ad for the United Church of Christ was cut by two networks because they feared that people may perceive the church as friendly towards gay couples.

Deemed too controversial executives thought it was better just to pull the commercial. So just over two hundred years later, freedom of religion and speech no longer exist.

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