The Case against TV Censorship

The Case against TV Censorship
Name
Institution
The Case against TV Censorship
Introduction
The Television set has grown to become of the necessities in each American home. In order to ensure that the content that is viewed on television is appropriate for all the age groups, the government has been blocking all the content that is viewed as offensive. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the one that is responsible for censoring all the TV content that is considered to be inappropriate. The FCC regulation stipulates that TV channels are not supposed to show any obscene content between 6am and 10pm. Across the board, the views on whether TV content should be censored has been received mixed feeling with some people claiming that this is warranted while others claim that this is inappropriate. Despite the reasons that are fronted to support TV censorship, the truth is that these reasons do not solve any of the intended problems and in the real sense bring about more harm than good.
One of the reasons that is affronted as a major reason for TV censoring is that it perpetrates violence among young people. This claim has been gaining much ground, especially considering that young people are spending more time than any other time in history watching television. Due to their undeveloped mind, most young people are not capable of filtering the most of the information that is passed across in television thus calling for the need to censor any TV content that might propagate violence or loose morals. According to the FCC, most people spend an average of 3 hours watching television meaning that this becomes an important influence in individual lives. Since the brain develops at different levels, there is a high likelihood that developing minds are fragile and can therefore pick up nearly everything without pausing to consider whether it is right or not. The proponents of TV censoring have also been claiming that violent TV content is to blame for the high rate of crime in the country and that censoring will drastically reduce this problem (Greenwald, 2013).
Despite the enticing arguments that are given to support TV censoring, the truth is that the practice is inappropriate first and foremost because it infringes on people’s freedom of speech and expression. Under the First Amendment, every American individual is given the freedom of speech and expression and censoring television takes away this basic human right. The National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) has been on the forefront in educating people against the dangers of censorship and ensuring that the FCC discontinues this retrogressive policy. For many years, America has been seen as an example of how democracy should function to the rest of the world and censoring TV has made many people to start questioning whether the nation is still worthy of this privilege. A healthy and operational democracy is characterized by the freedom of expression and the incapacity to air one’s ideas is hazardous to ethical, creative, and academic growth (Charren, 2006).
No matter the perspective from which it is examined, the truth is that TV censorship embodies an unreasonable amount of power and authoritarianism over the me...