Censorship

Censorship is the control of the information and ideas circulated within the society, in some parts of the world, the government controls the media. This means that no one can broadcast or publish anything a government considers immoral or harmful, or that threatens the country’s “stability”. Democratic countries, on the other hand, take pride in upholding the principle of freedom of speech, but England is a non-democratic country.

 Most people would agree that not all media texts are suitable for all audiences. It is generally agreed that there need to be some limitations placed on the type and content of texts which young children are exposed to, for instance. It is also agreed that the texts which are accessible to a wide and largely involuntary or non-selecting audience should not contain elements which might be offensive. Therefore, rules and regulations and systems have been set up to filter the content of certain media texts in certain situations. This is the practice of censorship. Pornography is probably the most pervasive type of censorship around the world, even though the behaviour it seeks to limit is, almost by definition, private and personal in the most fundamental way.