Censorship of Print Media is Wrong

Censorship of Print Media is Wrong

The printed media is undeniably a very powerful source used to communicate. It can be used for bad as well as good purposes. It can be used to inform the world of important events, or to publish pornography and mindless tabloids. Should the government be allowed to regulate what people can and cannot publish? Newspapers and forms of reading material are one of the largest forms of news that we use today. Every morning people can get out of bed, walk outside and pick up a piece of paper that informs them of important events that are occurring though out the world. However there is some published information that we never hear about. The U.S. government as well as several private distributors of printed media have censured several forms of printed information. Violence in the media has become a big issue for many politicians and national leaders. They feel that there are certain topics that should not be allowed to be talked about. To control this violence, politicians and private distributors have set unconstitutional standards on forms of media, censured certain materials, and banned several books due to their personal beliefs or morals.

There have been several types of media that have been banned from distribution in the United States. Books that express views in opposition of the norm have been banned. Magazines and articles promoting lifestyles that are considered unethical or unmoral have been kept from being released. Is this right? Should the government be allowed to control what we learn and what we read? As a free citizen of the United States I believe that this is unconstitutional. When the founding fathers wrote the constitution, they based their ideas around the o...

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... different from the general public and it is not our responsibility to pressure our views on them by silencing what they say.

The written word is mankind's oldest form of recorded information. It has allowed us to discover our culture and learn of the events and ideas of the past. The printed word has become a powerful source for worldwide communication. It is not our responsibility to restrain that. As Thomas Jefferson, one of our founding fathers, once said, "If the book is false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God's sake, let us hear freely from both sides."

Works Cited

http://www.xnet.com/~paigeone/noevil/chapultepec.html

Richardson, Terry, "Media in Modern Times": Allyn and Bacon Publishing: New York 1993

Callahan, Sidney. "What we see, we do: Violence & the media." Commonweal. 1996.