GMAT Essays (AWA)

Please review this issue and score it. Also, please review and score my other essays as well. Appreciate any comments or suggestions.

"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.

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Media can be broadly categorized in to informational media and recreational media. Media reaches to wide variety of audience which makes the topic really interesting to discuss. To make television and radio programs suitable for all audiences is a difficult task and yet some countries have strick restrictions on what is being broadcasted on television and radio. In this essay, I will provide my view on the topic and will also discuss on the reasons that I think why some countries are strict about the content of the media and also state my analysis on the topic before I give an answer to the question above.

Reasons behind censoring contents of a program in television or radio could vary from country to country, somtimes it could vary from state to state in a country. The reasons could be religion, culture, social aspects etc. Let us take broadcasting a sexual content as an example. GMAT is considered taboo in few asian countries, due to religious or cultural reasons but it is not the same with all western countries. So, few asian countries tend to have strict censoring towards sexual content in media as opposed to western countries. In such a case, a country's cultural or religious aspects play a vital role in deciding the contents to be censored. But not every one in the same country would have same beliefs and so censoring can be accepted by some people which may be ok to others.

Today's kids have more exposure to violence through media. A recent survey showed that violent behaviour in school kids have increased by 8% over all when they are more exposed to violence in media. A government or any organisation which is trying to censor violence from the media is only trying to so in interest of their future generation. But the censoring can not be applied as a whole as this affects the mature audiences too. One solution to such issue could be parenting control in television sets.

In few extreme cases, censoring in media can be taken as a violation of democracy. It can be considered like a law against right to speech. Consider an example of a ruling party censoring an important news announcement which could potentially detoriate their reputation. With this kind of censoring, public will never get a chance to hear the truth and this kind of a censoring should be condemend.

Censoring media has it's own pros and cons. In my opinion, as long as it is well regulated and all kinds audience are taken in to consideration when forming one, censoring can be allowed. Also, when forming such a regulation today's technical advancements like parenting control, audience rating etc. in televisions should be taken in to account so censoring is not overdone beyond a required level.

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