Custom essays on The Censorship of Television

Thesis statement: The censorship in media has both the strong and weak sides. In the majority of cases the society desperately needs it, because it’s a serious tool that helps to regulate explicit language, violence or inappropriate sexual content. These elements of programming have a very negative influence on the young audience. But the censorship in media it is not always effective and our society has to find ways to improve the censoring methods.
1. Media regulation and the necessity of TV censorship
2. Major reasons for using TV censorship
3. Elements of TV censorship
4. Effectiveness of TV censorship
A. Advantages of the censorship
B. Disadvantages of the censorship

 
1. Media regulation and the necessity of the censorship
Media are significant and influential tools of spreading the information. We should remember that they also have a powerful ability to form the public opinions.
The issue of media regulation has being discussed since the rise in popularity of television in 1950s. A censorship is a part of media regulation. Generally speaking, censorship means a control over information and ideas that are spread in a society. (Foerstel 1) It deals with media content assessment and in the process of it some elements (of the offensive or other inappropriate character) of the content are changed or excluded.
2. Major reasons for using TV censorship
The programming content may be thought to be “immoral or obscene, blasphemous, seditious or subversive, or injurious to the national security”. (Manganello, Franzini and Jordan 9)
It means that the main task of the censorship is to protection the society from such outrageous things.
“Censorship function – as a file cleaner of the speech we think clutters our world. Throughout most of history we have taken the filing approach to information: the more the better. In the modern information age, the increase of information has been phenomenal. With the corresponding expansion of the media, it is almost as if all the information has come out of the file drawer and is swirling around in the office of society.” (Garry 97)
3. Elements of TV censorship
What does censoring approach include? Mostly it means “exclusion of certain topics, social groups or language from the content of broadcast programming in general or at particular points in time.” (Manganello, Franzini and Jordan 9). It also means the development of certain set of rules and practices that will help to filter the media content.
There is an institution which is called the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that is a major regulator of television industry in the US. This institution has a right to restrict or censor some content of any TV channel in the country and it has developed it rules for content assessment. It also requires a balanced and fair approach to the TV programming and regulates the amounts of time that each channel has give for the public programming.
4. Effectiveness of TV censorship
The discussion about the necessity and effectiveness of TV censorship is quite complicated and controversial. Of course, there is no doubt, that not all media content should be available for all TV audiences. Therefore there is an understanding that certain limitations are required depending on the type of program and its content. The content that is accessible to wide and non-selecting audiences should not have any offensive elements in it and the need in censorship is understood.
At the same time, it doesn’t that much effective. It also may have some extreme consequences and many materials that have a slight hint of inappropriate character may be excluded, which is not right.