Censorship, television and the Big Read
Subjects ranging from sex on television to how the internet has changed the censorship debate came up when staff members of The Evening News gathered for a lunchtime discussion group on Fahrenheit 451 this week.
It was part of our participation in The Big Read. If you haven’t joined the fun, it’s not too late. Here are some links to catch you up: Kickoff; Events; Next week; Deborah Saul column; Tom Treece column
I was fascinated by how wide our conversation ranged. I suppose that’s testament to how many themes that remain relevant to our lives that were explored in the Ray Bradbury novel.
One of the questions that gets discussed a lot these days - and we spent some time on it, too - is when and whether government ought to censor the media.
If you prefer family fare on television, and especially if you have children at home, monitoring the content that flows into your home can be a nearly impossible task.
Then there’s the lyrics of music these days, which make the sex and violence on television seem mundane. And it’s virtually impossible to avoid pornography on the internet, whether you’re looking for it or not.
As Tom Treece pointed out in his column (see link above), there must be a line somewhere.
As a journalist, I’ve argued against censorship of all kinds. My mantra has been, let people decide for themselves in an open marketplace of ideas. No man or woman has the right to tell another what they can read, write, say, film, photograph, etc.
But as mass media becomes more and more pervasive, and as standards of decency fall lower and lower, I’m beginning to agree with Tom Treece - there must be a line somewhere.
I have the privilege of being involved in a panel discussion on April 19 (see events link above) on the topic of censorship. I suppose that gives me about two weeks to figure out an answer.
April 8th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I think censorship is very complex these days.
We have little opinion gods who control websites. They can remove or keep comments on web pages with no discussion.
There are ratings on some web pages. These create a sort of “working censorship” that can discount or support a writer’s ideas.
We have filters that can stop porn in a school computer system, but they can also stop access to a web site in the entire nation of China.
And you have business-related censorship. Is the Blade or Free Press going to report fairly on labor issues considering the union difficulties each has had? Is a town like Monroe going to have access to important information without a Borders or New York Times distribution or an art film theater?
I think an issue that is as big as censorship is the question of what gets credible attention in a world of a million information sources.
So, a paper like the New York Times has even more influence than it did before because it has a great reputation and is more widespread than before.
A paper like the Evening News plays that role at a local level. It’s the gate-keeper of information because it has a good reputation and a history. But there are certain kinds of information - gay and lesbian info./personal ads, for instance - that do not appear in the Evening News. One man’s “community standard” is another man’s censorship.
What I find really interesting is how a piece of information gets disseminated. An article might first appear in the New York Times. Then I’ll see it a few days later in the Detroit Free Press. Sometimes newspapers seem to be in an echo chamber, constantly repeating what all the other newspapers are printing.
There are also issues that everyone in the media seem to know, but they can’t print because there is no credible source. Take Newt Gingrich’s affair. No one reported it, but everyone in the media seemed to know it. So, you’d hear reporters knocking his credibility as a candidate because of “rumors” without actually reporting the rumor. We end up with journalistic brinksmanship. Who is going to report first?
And, finally, you have issues in plain sight. The Bush administration’s Iraq War justifications, the Congressional page scandal and the firing of the federal prosecutors were all issues that were reported and in some level of media circulation. But they only became widely known and reported after a media feeding frenzy developed.
So, you might not have a lot of censorship in the strictest sense. But we probably have more “soft censorship” than we’ve had in the past.
April 8th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Oh, one more thing. There is a lot more “managing” of information these days. Newt Gingrich and Mike Cox reveal their affairs to friendly media sources two years before elections to immunize themselves. But if the information was important two years before an election, why isn’t it still important at the time of election itself.
And if you’ve got a problem, send out a press release on the Friday before Easter.
And if you repeat an idea enough, and get enough web sites and enough TV news reporters to repeat the idea, you will have created truth - at least for one-third or one-half of the population.
April 9th, 2007 at 6:54 am
I agree with you, Mike, that censorship gets more complicated every day. As we reach and surpass information overload on the internet, the people who search for and aggragate information have become the newest censors. They’re the new gatekeepers who control what the rest of us have access to.
And I agree with you that in a knowledge economy, credibility of news sources becomes critical. With 10 million sources of news, people are going to hunger for one source they can trust.
As a journalist, I’ve always been troubled by the implicit censorship that comes with every news decision we make. If we decide not to cover a story, in effect we’ve denied access to that story.