Suppose, you are an undergraduate first year student, and you are attending an international conference. A distinguished panel is talking about democracy. You have got some questions and you really want to raise them up. In the questions and answers section, after raising your hand several times, you have got the mike. Suddenly, one of the officers of the organizing team comes and takes the mike away from you and says “You are too young to share your ideas in front of this distinguished panel.” And you cannot share your ideas and questions. Is it called censorship? Censorship is the authoritarianism or suppression of ideas and information. Usually censorship is about removing or putting restriction on public access to newspapers, magazines, films, books, videos, or works of art. However, censorship might happen everywhere even in our family and in everyday life; for example, your experience in the conference. My story conveys that sometimes it is really hard to justify censorship as what ideas or information should be suppressed and therefore it is a very complicated topic.
Last summer, when I was in my home, I experienced censorship though it did not seem like censorship when it happened. One of our neighboring girls named Rita (pseudonym) stole a small souvenir from my friend’s house next door though her family was well off. I and my two younger sisters came to know about it as my friend told us hoping that we could share the truth about Rita with her parents so that they can help her to amend herself. We also came to know that she stole another small souvenir from the same house before. We decided to share this with my Mother and Rita’s o parents. At first, we told our Mother everything and said that we were going to tell Rita’s parents about it. My Mother told us that we do not need to do that, and at any means we should not do that. We tried to make our Mother understand that we should tell Rita’s parents about this. Otherwise, stealing things would be her bad habit. However, our Mother said that if you tell them about it, they would never believe you and would say that you guys are lying about their daughter. They might insult you as well. She strictly forbade us to share this incident with anyone especially with Rita’s parents. As a result, the information we had about Rita was suppressed by my Mother and could not be expressed at all.
Though it seems that, my Mother took our freedom of expression away, Rita’s parents have played a big role behind this censorship. Rita’s parents used to think that Rita is the most innocent girl in our neighborhood, and she cannot do anything wrong. They blindly believe whatever Rita says. As a result, they do not believe at all if anyone says bad things about Rita. They treat them in a very bad away like scolding, arguing, and even talk phony about them. My Mother did not let us say what we felt we should say. My Mother was forced to take our freedom of expression by Rita’s parents because if my Mother let us share the information about Rita with her parents, it might have had a bad effect on our family relationship with Rita’s family. Moreover, we would have been treated in a bad way which was not acceptable by my Mother. On the other hand, if Rita parents would try to know the truth about her daughter by allowing people share any information about their daughter, my mother would permit us to say the truth, and our freedom of expression would not be taken away.
This censorship had a short term affect on us as we were upset with our Mother, but it had a long term negative effect on Rita because she could not know what she was doing wrong. Most of the time, our Mother allow us to do or say what we feel right, so when my Mother told us not to reveal the truth, we were so surprised and frustrated. We thought that we were trying to help Rita be saying the truth about her doings so that she can correct herself. But, we were not allowed to do so. As a result, we were upset with my Mother. However, later on, when my Mother explained why she did not allow freedom of expression, we have found her reasons reasonable because she tried to protect us and our family relationship with Rita’s family. Rita was the most affected because as her parents indirectly did not allow revealing the truth about her, so there was no one to tell her that she should not have done this. She might be doing this again and again which would guide her to a bad and negative side of her character over the time.
However, it is really very hard to determine whether my Mother’s censorship was justified or not. There was an understandable reason for my Mother behind the censorship. She was concerned about us and our family relationship with Rita’s family. She was afraid that we would be insulted and accusing of lying which might have a negative effect on us. She was also very concerned about the family relationship between two families as we have been neighbor for almost fourteen years. She had a reasonable explanation for the censorship, but her censorship suppressed the truth about Rita to her parents. Even though this censorship was my Mother’s attempt to protect us and family relation with neighboring family, it harmed Rita in the long run. Sometimes I feel guilty that I should have told them the truth so that Rita can correct herself with the help of her parents. However, I was also aware of my mother’s concern. Probably, I would make my Mother understand that despite of the chance of being insulted, we should somehow help Rita and her family in order to protect her from having a bad habit of stealing.
When I thought of this incident later, I have come to understand that sometimes it becomes very hard to determine whether we should allow freedom of expression or not, and it is very hard to justify a censorship. We should look out both sides of the story. Censorship might seem good for a certain moment or for a group of people when someone censors something. But we should think further whether this censorship will have any negative effect on people in long run or not. For example, to my Mother censoring us was a good thing because she had protected us from a bad experience, but for Rita it was really bad because it might encourage her to continue the stealing because nobody said anything to her about it. The censor seemed good and justified when my Mother censored us, but in the long run Rita was affected.
This story also reveals some important points to me about censorship like people involved in censorship, nature of censorship, and what people think censorship does. Usually we think that censorship can only be happened by the government or the authorities. However, it can occur by the people very close to us. Sometimes we cannot even imagine that these caring people like our mothers can censor us. It also shows that we cannot always say that only mean people censor. Sometimes the people we care can censor us in for our betterment like my Mother did to protect us from having a bad experience. To define nature of censorship is also very difficult. Sometimes it brings good and sometimes causes bad to us. For example, my mother’s censorship kept us away from having a bad experience saved our family relationship with Rita’s family. In this point, it should be considered as good. However, it causes bad to Rita as this censorship did not let her realize that she was doing wrong, so it should be considered as bad. Though we usually think that censorship removes problems and improve lives, it actually does not. It may hide the truth for some time, but it creates more problems in the future. My Mother’s censorship hid the truth and might have eradicated problems for some time. But it did not remove the problems in Rita and did not improve her character or life; even it led her to a negative habit.
Your experience in the conference was clearly a censorship, and you should have not been censored. However, was censoring us justified for my Mother? You cannot easily answer this question. Considering censorship’s effects, people involved in censorship and their role, nature of censorship, justification of it, common ideas about censorship, it’s really difficult to say what and when should anything be censored.