Please refer to the 3 different types of censorship covered in these papers to create the conclusion. Our team is taking the stance against it. Also, please help to create a power point presentation with the most important points of the these conclusions

There are many jurisdictional entities in the world where media censorship is heavily enforced, for examples: North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, China, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Iran. There are also other entities that are looser in their censorship, for examples: Iceland, Canada, Australia, Germany, United States. (Petronzio, 2014).

Media censorship itself has many causes and effects that are related to many other factors: Economic, politic, education, religion. The act of censoring is not bad itself, but depending on the purpose, it could go both ways.

Media censorship can be a good thing when it was designed to protect undeveloped individuals from seeing and hearing things that are inappropriate to their ages. It also provides the people right to not see and hear things that are not their choices. For example, the movie “Fifty Shades of Grey” was rated PG-12 in France while it was R-rated in the U.S and U.K, and even illegal in China. (Keslassy, 2015). In this scenario, the movie was partly or fully censored for the educational cause, as many are concerned for the young teenagers’ mental development. Another example is when United States Supreme Court rule that “Offers to provide or requests to obtain child pornography are categorically excluded from the First Amendment” (Greenhouse, 2008) making it a crime to offer, solicit sexually explicit images of children, this is often referred to as Protect Act, from my perspective, this is an excellent decision and it has been working effectively as an effort to prevent child prostitution, child pornography and other abusive forms of minors.

Media censorship can also be a very effective tool to manipulate and misguide for certain individuals and organizations. For example, the North Korea government has spent decades trying to keep its people from exposing to other’s nations media. They have used it for years as an “invisible” weapon to prevent any thoughts of escaping, mistrusting or even rebelling, the result, as we all know for a fact, North Korea becomes one of the most poverty countries in the world resulting from the inability of approaching and adapting with the world’s growing technology. The less freedom the people have to explore and develop, the more negative political and economic impacts affected the very own people.

Not just North Korea, but also Cuba is one of the most censored countries media-wise, the state itself has control over the mass media, also independent journalists and bloggers are frequently going to jail for doing their jobs without the approval of the states. Many “sensitive” websites in Cuba’s internet access is blocked, thus leading to the difficulties of communication between Cuban and oversea human rights activists (Salomon, 2016).

Saudi Arabia’s media is strictly controlled by censorship from the government, throughout history, Saudi’s officials have banned public cinemas, American children’s films satellite television, Wikipedia, Google translates, LGBT supportive material, Christian material… some of these banning materials have eventually been lifted but some still remain in effect, the reason? Political and Religion influences. (Wikipedia, 2018)

Censorship has not been the hottest issue that worth debates about in the United States, but in the recent years when political, religious and educational issues became more and more sensitive, with the media outlets getting more and more divided every day, news articles and postings became a tool where a certain group of people with a certain common standpoints find something to read that will please them instead of the truth. Articles were cut, edited and even censored to protect a certain group of people’s feelings. Articles were used to spread divisiveness and political party’s interest instead of the interest of the People. Censorship plays a big role in this media epidemy. For example Silicon Valley technology giants (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google,…) had persecuted millions of accounts and call it an act of “cleaning up” the Internet, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-California) even mention to lawyers of these companies to “do something or we will” (McCaughey, 2018). Free speech is at stake whether you agree with these companies or not.

The First Amendment of the United States state that: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” And for numerous times this amendment has been violated. The very basic freedom of man is to speak his mind without getting persecuted or censored. Censorship has been actively used as a tools for dictators and brutal regimes to rise and thrive (although ironically the people in it usually starve), no man is trusted to be the “ruler”, that’s part of the reason why our founding fathers established “check and balances” as well as electoral college system. Giving some people the right to decide whether someone can voice on something or not even without violating any laws can set for bad consequences as we can see from Vietnam, China, North Korea, Cuba and most recently, Venezuela. Protect freedom of speech!

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