My experience on censorship - Essay Example

Teacher ENG 1020 12 June Censorship during Ramadan In my opinion, censorship should be defined as an itative figure or body that uses discretion when choosing to release certain information to everyday citizens. While some people may see this as a bad thing, there can be good uses of censorship. One such instance is when adult programming is on television and a parent chooses to take their child out of the room. The program is obviously not suitable for the small child to watch so the parent takes responsibility by not allowing their child to be exposed to those kinds of things. Almost no one would deny that censorship in this example is wrong because the whole purpose is to protect the child. Where censorship goes to far is when someone wants to hide damaging information about them from being released to the public. This is common with many Middle Eastern leaders due to the local culture accepting such practices.
One moment that shaped my personal awareness about censorship was last year during the Ramadan festival. It is common that television shows are censored at the time of Ramadan because it is considered to be “unholy” to focus on worldly things. During last year’s festival, there were many political protests all over the Arab world. To focus on these protests, there were some shows that talked about the demonstrations and played clips of some of the fighting. Because this was and is still a sensitive issue, many of the television channels in Dubai blocked these shows. The reasons given for this action were very vague and no one could understand why they had done so. I had personally become very interested in the Arab spring, so to see television programming covering it banned made me think that too much censorship is actually a bad thing. If, as many governments claim, the violence is perpetrated by opposition terrorist, then show the footage and let the people decide for themselves. The only reason why they would choose to censor these stories was if the programs gave an opinion that reflected badly on the government. Thus, the government chooses to censor these programs in order to protect their own means. No thought had been given to the people who want to find out information by themselves rather than rely on secondary sources. My opinion over censorship changed from this incident because there was no good reason to censor news from the Arab Spring other than it might further fuel the fire that many people feel towards their governments.
Censorship is a subject that provokes a lot of debate because there are different reasons why it should either be encouraged or forbidden. I am of the opinion that censorship is a dangerous tool that should not be used, and my experience with television programming during the Arab Spring helped to change my opinion to this. Read More