Thursday, February 14, 2008
Francis Lin
“Reporters should submit their work to government officials so they may determine if it’s a threat to the country.”I would have to disagree with this statement because what would freedom of the press be if the government would be allowed to control what gets circulated to the public. If the government had that kind of power they would have the power to control the thought and lives of its people. The power of the press is the most powerful thing there is because of its ability to influence a large mass of people. The only point of view that the people would see would be the point of view of the government. In most societies, most people will form their thoughts and opinions based on what the media says. They will either agree or disagree based on what they have previously been informed about. If there is only one source coming out, there will only be one view point. Only one way to think. What would be such a threat to our country that our own government would find it appropriate to censor from us? A terrorists bomber? If that is that case, the people should know and be on alert. An overthrow of the government? If that many people respond to an article about that, then the government deserves to be overturned. There is no excuse for allowing the government to intervene and censor the media. There have been governments in the past where the government controlled all of media. Good examples would be Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia. Both used their propaganda machines to convince their countries that what they were doing was for the good of the state, even at the cost of the lives of others. In fact, this book, 1984 is an allegory for the time of Stalin and his terrible reign, and how he used the power of the media to shape the minds of all that he controlled. Now, if the media were to control the power of the press, our world would be like George Orwell’s Oceania in the year 1984.
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I would have to agree with what I believed in before, even after reading 1984. In fact, this book serves as a support to the statement I said before. I believed that reporters should not submit their work to the government officials because I believe that if a country were to control the media, they would be able to control everything. That is made extremely evident in 1984. In the book, the Party uses the Ministry of Truth to censor the past to make sure that that anything of the past would be consistent with the Party's current ideas. This way, The Party exercises absolute control over the past and ultimately the future. Using this power, they leave all the citizens of Oceania completely oblivious to the truth and the time before the revolution. This would be the direct result of what would happen if the reporters were to be the humble subordinates of the government. The media is meant to inform the public of the what is going on in the world with multiple opinions, but ultimately reporting the truth. Like I said before, if the government were to interfere and censor what they think is "not fit" for the public to see, then the balance of the media would be disturbed and this Orwellian Dystopia made evident in 1984 would become a reality. In fact, these practices were not works of fiction. During Stalinist Russia, Stalin had special propaganda machines used to censor the past and remove the people he executed. He used the media to tarnish the reputation of his arch-nemisis Leon Trotky. Sound familiar? Well it was the same thing that Big Brother did to Emanuel Goldstein. Big Brother had the power to change the very fabric of reality because he had such a tight gripe upon the media. If Big Brother were to say 2+2=5, it woudl be true. The power of the media is the most powerful one of them all. If the goverment had the power to censor the media, a country would morph into the dytopias of Stalinist Russia and it allegory depicted in 1984.
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