The Vote Against TV Censorship to Help Preserve Citizens’ Rights. Freedom of Expression is Crucial to a Free Society and Censors Are Employed by Those Who Seek Control.

The argument against tv censorship is often expressed as the danger of universally blinkering the viewing public and preventing people from receiving a more complete view of the world in which they live.

Censorship of tv programs in the past often left viewers with false impressions of how people lived in general, what was right or wrong, or what problems existed either in the United States or in the world.

Issues of ethnicity and sexuality were prime examples of topics that tv censorship ‘swept under the carpet’.

As such, companies producing tv broadcasting material were fettered in their possibilities and constrained to producing material that would not offend the censor’s limiting point of view.

The direct result was that the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, and by extension the freedom of the media, was seriously compromised. This went in direct contradiction with the First Amendment.

Just How Far Censorship Can Go Concerning The TV
Effectively with-holding important information from the viewing public also reduced the possibility of that public to know what problems the United States needed to deal with, and to ask the Government to effectively resolve those problems.

TV censorship in its most extreme form has far-reaching consequences.

These include government intervention in broadcasting organizations’ activities, such as taking away their license to broadcast, jamming broadcasting, favoring government sponsored stations and government defined content, and cutting scenes from films shown on TV.

Automated Censorship Integrated Into The TV
The 1996 V-chip law passed by the Government is a demonstration of tv censorship bordering on totalitarianism. This law allowed makers of television sets to place so-called ‘V-chips’ or anti-violence chips in television sets that would prevent certain TV situations from being shown. Putting such chips in to tv sets opens the door to intervention in all sorts of other situations and eradicates barriers against tv censorship.

Taking such possibilities to the limit, it would be possible to censor tv programs in such a way that religious, political or cultural references that were not considered suitable could also be blocked. Using technology to take decisions that should be the responsibility of parents does nothing to help the development of mature citizens who think for themselves and act responsibly.

Given all the other decisions which citizens are allowed to, and often asked to, make, tv censorship looks like overkill, another reason to fight against tv censorship.

Driving a car and voting for a rep in Congress are both acts with potentially far-reaching consequences that go far beyond decisions about whether not to watch a particular program on television.

TV Censorship is a Solution Looking For a Problem
TV Censorship whether attempted by technology or by human intervention is all too obvious. Travelers to countries such as Pakistan have reported on extremely subjective real-time censoring with wide variations in what was considered suitable or not. The bottom line is that TV censorship is a difficult, sometimes impossible activity to carry out and in many cases does more harm than good.

TV censorship is also a solution to the wrong problem. If families could live lives where they were less dependent on television to occupy people’s time, and in particular children’s time, tv censorship as a debate would rapidly diminish in importance.

The answer in this case is not to limit what people can watch on television, but to offer them more appetizing ways of passing their time, with preferably a more beneficial effect on their minds and the social development. That is the best argument against tv censorship