Other controversial subjects are politics and ownership and control of the media. For example, if one company has control of a vast part of the media, they may be exploiting it for their own gains, and sometimes, a company will produce material that is biased, and so gives the public a distorted view. For example, the “City Slickers” otherwise known as stockbrokers, of the Daily Mirror, were recently sacked for recommending companies in which they had just bought shares, so that the public would buy them, resulting in the companies being worth much more and therefore making a profit for the columnists.
It seems that as most people agree on some form of censorship, the core issue in deciding how far the rules should go. For example, should all aspects of the media be censored? What happens if the issues raised are mentioned in the media in an educational context? Should footage of riots and protests, such as the recent ones focussing on animal testing, not be broadcast on the news in case they offend? These issues, and many more, are very complex and often have to be judged individually.
To give some uniformity to censorship and provide a means of doing so, there are practises such as film classification, where films and videos are issued with the minimum age people have to legally be to watch them. This is judged by the Film Classification Board who look at content such as nudity, profanity and violence. Another way that censorship is implemented is by the use of watchdogs, independent supervisory bodies such as the ITC (Independent Television Commission) that oversees ITV and Channel Four. These are meant to eliminate corruption and political bias, but some people argue that because they are generally less rigorous than in previous years, there will eventually be no restrictions and programme content will become very unbalanced. Another, less structured way of censorship is self-regulation, where a company decides for itself what is acceptable and what is not. An example of this is the way the media has regulated itself over coverage of Prince William, by not reporting on anything that could be construed as a breach of privacy. Often, organisations are censored by self-regulation first, and then independent bodies. This is generally true of newspaper corporations.
Assessing the evidence available, it is very apparent that a certain degree of censorship is required, in the main to protect exposure to children of certain media texts. Generally, this concerns media such as television programmes, videos and the internet, and content such as bad language, violence and sex.
The watershed is a good idea but has to be implemented by parents; unfortunately, some parents are not responsible enough to do this. Although children mature at varying rates it is obvious that measures such as film classification do not reflect this, for example, some thirteen-year-olds are more mature than some fifteen-year-olds yet will not be able to view films with a fifteen certificate. It does seem bizarre that in the eyes of the law, a child is not judged mature enough to watch a twelve certificate film until the day of their twelfth birthday. However, it seems to be the fairest method. If this system was not in place then parents would have to decide what was suitable viewing for their child; and ignorance or irresponsibility may lead to them making bad decisions, as well as the fact that it is not always practical for a parent to veto videos or films if, for example, their offspring is at a friend’s house. Although some children may have access to videos which contain such things as violence and drug taking, at least parents know that because of their age certificate they will be inappropriate. As unfortunately, it seems that parents cannot always be trusted to put their child’s welfare first, it seems that in the main, the state should control censorship for children so it is similar for every child.
Moving on from children, censorship also concerns adults. Sometimes, scenes that contain sex, swearing and violence are reasonably necessary, for example in a “gritty, true to life drama” such as ITV’s ‘London’s Burning’. However, these should not be broadcast until after the watershed, and the elements mentioned should not be included purely for the sake of higher ratings and controversy. Controversial parts of the media should have a clear and constructive purpose, for example, if drug dealing or drug paraphernalia is broadcast in a programme, it should be showing the negative sides rather than any positive sides. Also, there are some elements, such as graphic sexual violence, that should not be broadcast at all. There is no legitimate reason why the general public would want to, or should, view such material and at the most, content like this should be merely implied. Neither children nor adults should be exposed. The opinion that adults should be able to view anything that they want, is flawed because it would result in shocking programmes that would disgust almost everyone initially, then become mainstream. This is because controversy sells.
Presently, the internet seems the most complex part of the media to control, this is because it comprises so much content which is ever-increasing and from country to country, there are varying laws. Although there are some internet watchdogs, for example, one based in Manchester whose investigative efforts recently resulted in the convictions of a ring of paedophiles who had swapped thousands of obscene photographs online, it appears it would be virtually impossible to filter all the undesirable material out. Carol Vorderman has recently launched a campaign against leaving children to their own devices on the internet, claiming that children are “three clicks away from a paedophile”. However, often one has to actively search out explicit material and many sites require identification (although this is often dubious). On the other hand, it seems that public chat rooms are the main problem, so they should be monitored by overseers. Watchdogs should continue working to combat illegal sites but generally, internet users should be aware and children should be supervised.
There does not appear to be any major causes for concern surrounding censorship and politics. Even though some newspapers are politically biased, they mainly present the full image; and the BBC claims to be totally unbiased. As the BBC is very influential, this is particularly important. The ongoing ‘Foot and Mouth’ crisis, where millions of cloven hoofed animals are being infected with the highly contagious disease of the same name, shows the positive and negative aspects of censorship in politics and the media. The media has shown that the government has tried to conceal the extent of the crisis, by exposing this, the public are now more aware of what is happening. Yet on the other hand, there is now so much hype surrounding it that people are reluctant to visit rural areas, having disastrous consequences for traders in unaffected tourist spots such as Kendal.
It is important that the country does not have heavy political censorship because it would develop into something resembling Hitler’s Nazi Germany, where there is no freedom of speech and the state has total power, described in George Orwell’s cult novel ‘1984’. However, it is important that a person’s life is not put in danger due to revelations in the media. A case to note is that of Salman Rushdie, the author whose life was endangered after he offended his native Muslim faith; if his exact whereabouts had been reported in the media, he would have faced almost certain death. Every incident should be judged individually, but as far as the public can realistically know, there is no need for any radical changes.
Self-regulation would be ideal if it worked constantly, because it reduces the use of the ‘middle man’, i.e. independent watchdogs, and would result in a society with much less aggressive laws and guidelines. However, this would be almost impossible to implement because boundaries would inevitably be pushed. Self-regulation of the press has been very successful regarding coverage of Prince William, as described previously, but on other occasions it has not. For example, on terrestrial television, Channel Five has shown many programmes and documentaries that have pushed the boundaries of taste and respectability, such as the pornographic game show, ‘Naked Jungle’. Many people therefore believe that the channel has exploited their practice of self-regulation. It seems that overall, regulation of this type would be effective if employed correctly, but it should be monitored by outside bodies. Consequently, this would not technically be self-regulation.
To summarize, it seems that censorship is certainly necessary, somewhere between the two very distant extremes of total censorship and absolute freedom, for the protection of mankind. However, as discussed, practicing censorship is not an easy task because the world is presently comprised of six billion, one hundred and thirty seven million, six hundred and sixty thousand, three hundred and nine* individuals with varying needs, maturity and religious and moral beliefs. Therefore, censorship is not ideal for any one person; so a compromise has to be reached to ensure that it fits in to a certain extent with everyone. Unless the inhabitants of the world all become cloned versions of each other, this will never change. Taking this into account, the present censorship generally seems to be the most accurate and fair it can be under the circumstances; although because censorship covers such a wide range of media, there are some small discrepancies on both sides of the spectrum.
* According to the International Programs Center, U.S. Bureau of the Census, projected to 29/3/01 at 17:53:55 GMT.
