Pros And Cons Of Censorship

Censorship Splits

Secrets, cover-ups, lies and holding back are all forms of what society calls censorship. There are many forms of censorship, including public, private and self, that exist for different reasons but only the brave examine those reasons. Murrow, Wu, Lovett and Baughman closely inspect these different types and give their opinions on the subject. What they say is all similar. Censorship has a negative impact and is dangerous to society.

Murrow wrote in “Wires and Lights in a Box” about the uprising idea of corporations overtaking and suppressing the raw news in radio and television stations during the 1950s. When one group censors another it is called private censorship. Wu had a similar idea in “The Future of Free Speech”

He clarifies, “the greatest dangers to free speech in the future will come not from government interference but from speech monopolists” (Wu par. 3). This claim is supported in various places where online businesses or companies choose to take down certain comments due to countless unique reasons. People can no longer express themselves via the internet without having the risk of being reported and suppressed by the company themselves. The national government may give the citizen the option of expressing themselves but companies will not due to the fear of being sued from so called risky or aggressive material. Wu warns that if the American people are not more cautious, “private censors can pose a serious threat to free speech” (Wu par.12). The government may not take away the rights to express one’s own self but private companies

This can be dangerous in the sense that it demolishes the unique voices and ideas of the people within in a culture. It takes away the unfiltered thoughts that people have to instead show they conform to the opinions of others. Lovett articulates, “The right to free speech may begin and end with the First Amendment, but there is a vast middle where our freedom of speech is protected by us—by our capacity to listen and accept that people disagree” (Lovett par. 19). This means that in order to retain free speech and fully grasp the volume of it, people have to listen to others ideas. And those people sitting back so they do not get proven wrong must speak up because no opinion is wrong, there are just different sides to every story. Everyone deserves the opportunity to form a belief on an issue but if that view is not expressed, it does not really matter to society. That view is just censored out.

Baughman, although much less focused on the idea of censorship, touches upon it in “The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism.” Partisan journalism is reporting with strong bias. Today, Baughman writes that people can go to safe harbors to express mistakes and misleading information told by news organizations (Baughman par. 20). The