Hoo S. Pai: Television

Do governments have right to censor television programs?

Hoo S. Pai

Generally, most governments regulate television broadcasting and control what will be shown to the public. In fact, we implicitly agree to the idea of a control of information and expect to keep our society’s soundness by blocking out nudity and violence through government interference. Therefore, it seems as if the government’s right to censor television programs is reasonable. For many people, this censorship in the media, however, symbolizes a serious violation of free speech. In addition, some people are even skeptical whether the censorship to block out violence is actually effective. Basically, I agree government’s right should be restricted to censor television programs in terms of two issues: freedom of expression and the findings of scientific studies.

Firstly, governments’ right to censor ought to be constrained because freedom of expression is one of the most important civil liberties. Free speech means that all people can say whatever they want. Therefore, any limit to freedom of expression could fall under the category of censorship. TV producers believe it damages their creativity when they have to follow censorship rules. Civil libertarians also point once the government begins to limit free speech, the limitations will increase. The less the limitation to free speech rights is, the more freedom of expression is. It is the reason why governments have to control media to a minimum.

Secondly, governments’ censorship need not to be exercised or should be partly because there is no solid evidence about the correlation between media and violence. Usually, people are likely to think media causes violence, and most parents want to protect their children from viewing violent programs. There, however, have been over 1,000 empirical researches that showed media do not cause violence. Moreover, according to a TV survey, 20% of violent teenagers were affected from media, while 43% of them from parents. This result means parents’ responsibility for violent children is even larger than TV’s. Therefore, it is not a rational attitude to accept totally the notion of media violence.
The phrase “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” is frequently quoted to emphasize the importance of free speech. Of course, it is not desirable to insist that every limitation to free speech rights is not good. For instance, we couldn’t accept the neo-Nazi propaganda as the free speech right, and their instigation must be controlled. That’s why governments do have right to censor influential media. The right, nevertheless, should be exercised limitedly and partly. In order to do that, governments had better participate, as a member, in the neutral commission comprised of a government agency, the parliament, TV stations, and civil organizations.