GMAT Essays (AWA)

“In some countries, television and radio programs are carefully censored for offensive language and behavior. In
other countries, there is little or no censorship.”
In your view, to what extent should government or any other group be able to censor television or radio programs?
Explain, giving relevant reasons and/or examples to support your position.

The debate of whether the media should be censored is a controversial one. On the one hand, some people might argue that, freedom to do what we like to do is very important. On the other hand, these people forget that, the job of the government is to protect its citizens from any kind of harm. In this respect, I would like to argue in favor of limited censoring of television and radio programs by the government.

Censorship is aimed to protect us, because the government cuts the scenes which may mentally affect us otherwise. Censorship may include blocking of books, plays, films, televisions, commercials, and radio programs. Media censorship is put in place because the content can be obscene, or blasphemous to our security. For example, a film which portrays hatred among the ruling class and the working class which may trigger violence could be censored.

My reason for going with censoring is that, there are many objectionable media programs which can be hazardous for young children. It is human tendency to try to emulate what we see. Children will not have the idea of what is right and what is wrong for them. If they try to imitate what is being shown on the television or use the words which they hear on radios, they might cause harm to themselves. In India, Shaktiman, a program on a super human-being was banned, after young children started copying the acts like jumping from rocks etc, putting themselves in grave danger.

However, I would like to say that, censoring television or radio programs, to hide government’s misdeeds, is unacceptable. There are several cases in our history where governments have tried to black out media completely from the public. For example in 2007, Pakistan president General Musharaff's action of banning the local and international media from projecting his sacking of Supreme Court judges as a sin, drew widespread criticism. China is another example where media does not have complete freedom to air the views against the government. Such absurd acts by the people in power cannot be constructive.

In sum, any kind of censoring should be constructive, and help the majority of citizens in some way. Censoring with a selfish motive on part of the government is condemnable.

Good work overall. My only negative comment is that you should use a real world example in every body paragraph - your first paragraph uses a general/hypothetical example, which weakens your argument. Better would have been to cite a specific film.

Also, a minor thing: avoid using "I" in your writing. Try to write in third person.

Good job though - I'll give you a 5.

Hi Jim,

That's a big morale booster. Thank you for your comments. I will try to implement them next time.

Regards,
Sathya

The extent to which the government or some other group should be allowed to
censor televsion and radio programs has always been a debatable issue.
However, a close examination of the issue reveals that there should be
censorship on programs aired by TV or radio such that people of the country
dot get influenced in the wromg way.

First, offensive language and behavior potrayed in television and radio
programs can have a detterent effect on children.They can get easily
influenced and immitate what they hear or see on TV,radio.Therefore, the
censorship body should make sure that such progrmas be censored to an
extent that children dont get influenced by them.For example many young adults
begin to use abusive language that they hear in these prgrams.Also certain
Bike ads for Hero Hondo where stunts are performded by the riders are immitted
by these adults as a result of which many accidents have been reported,since
the stunts are done by professions.

Secondly,any program shown in these media should never hurt the religious
sentiments of the people of the country.If such sentiments are hurt it can lead
to civil rights in the country.For example in India one of the programs aired on TV
made fun of Sardars,a minority in Punjab,which resulted in major riots in Punjab.


Finally, if no censorship is done on programs shown by television or
radio then there would be no control over the influence of theses media
on the people of the country.Without control a country will never
be able to function properly.Therefore the censorship body should
do whatever it takes to prevent these media from influencing its
people in wrong way.