Censorship, True or False? Reading Response: Censors Come Calling

Currently, censorship becomes one of most popular global topic.

“The internet opened fresh avenues for free speech and the explosion of ideas. But in some countries loose talk is banned and many are punished for their ideas.”

The Article “censors come calling” report by Lisa Murray had critical analysis how governments use censorship to protect their own profit where governments seriously hinder freedom of press.

I think that there are basically censor for 2 reasons

1, censor the sexual, violence information to avoid the un-healthy environment for teens;

2, censor information that sensitive to the government or power groups so that to create an “unmistakable”, “objectionable” organization.

 Most people said that censor the sexual, violence information is a good thing to do but the government should not impede the freedom of speech. This is totally contradiction as freedom of press means press freely without any censor, even the sexual, violence press.

so I think there is no absolutely true or false, such as censor the sexual, violence information, teens may quest the censored information just like someone give you a box and told you do not open it, but you may curious what’s in the box. Worse they may do something violence while they don't even know that’s a wrong thing to do.

 Censor the information that sensitive to the government, is it really a bad thing? We know that American is a country that less restraints of freedom press compare to China. China is a censor black hole but I think because Chinese government have been censor hardly so they have a safer, peaceful environment while in America we can always hear about terrorist, war and protest.

There is no absolutely true or false for censorship but the way how you see it.

CITIZEN JOURNALISM

Journalists, as we all know, are the trained professionals who specialize in investigating and report events and issues to the public. 
In my opinion, Citizen Journalism is one form of Journalism that provides more opportunities to the public to report news, as every citizen could report information without professional training. Citizen Journalists can report information in different forms including in photos, texts, videos and as a report or podcast in online blogs. For example, it could capture any of the news events that send to news company or posted on blogs and other popular social networking such as facebook, twitter, myspace, youtube to provide a quicker, effective information relate to the news event.

The terror attack, 9/11 Bombings in 2001 is an example that citizen journalism effectively shows the fact in first time through uploads.

Sichuan earthquake in 2008 is another example where the first information come from twitter and then speared to different social networking with different form of text such as photos, text of the earthquake. This shows the important and effective of the citizen Journalist.

As the public usually are the audience of the News, their reports effectively represent the view of everyday people. This can give the power to people worldwide to report the information without the influence of the government or a specific interferer. Media has been defined as the fourth estate which the media sphere has individual power to press freely without influence of other estates. However, completely objective and factual reports are occasional in today’s society since most media organizations reports are either affected by bias, or have removed due to censorship and influences of authoritarians. Citizen Journalism, in this case, can improve the situation by presenting an uncensored, factual report that contributes to a healthier media environment.