A Censored Histroy
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A Censored History:
Censorship in the United States
Most of the information that is released to the United States public has been edited, altered, and/or censored. This censoring of information can be performed by the following sources:
The Government
Education Facilities
The Medias
Parents
Libraries
Art galleries
Churches
The U.S. government has many secret papers, cover-ups, controversies, and conspiracies to conceal. In many of our educational facilities, many historical events have been forbidden from being taught in class. Much of the media that we see in the news has had over half of it edited out by censors. The media is also being censored by the medias themselves, this is known as self-censorship. Parents can have any book they want banned from schools, if there are enough of them. Many libraries refuse to carry controversial books. Some art galleries will not display certain works. The separation of church and state has been enforced ever since the early 1800s. The use of censorship should be lowered because, as citizens of the United States, we deserve the right to know what is going on in America.
Many of us have seen the documents with permanent marker marks over some of the words or sentences: This is a form of government censorship. There have been many attempts for American citizens to reveal or even just view government secretes. Many of them were met with jail time, threats, or even death. For many years the Roswell UFO incident was being covered-up .The information concerning what happened that day was sealed by the government. Instead of revealing what happened that day, the government said that the debris on the crash site were the remains of a weather balloon. Later, the government release what they called Project Blue Book. It stated that the remains were not of a weather balloon, but of an unidentifiable flying object (Korff).
Censorship is widely evident in many of our departments of education. The students of the schools where censorship is seen and is opposed have attempted many times to end it. This is shown in Everett High School where the journalism class prints a very bare paper. It included a picture of two seniors with their hands behind their backs with tape covering their mouths. The class created the article to oppose the principals rejection of a school paper because they believed it violated their “right to a free press” (Wilson).
Many people feel that some books should not be exposed to the student body at some schools. These books are being taken off of schools required reading lists. This is being done by parents and/or teachers who petition enough names. The large number of citizens, who are beginning to become angry at the large amounts censoring occurring today, is growing rapidly (Williams).
Teacher/student censorship is also evident at Shenendehowa Central. This school is one in three schools that have endured a lawsuit from the Alliance Defense Fund for censoring students who are pro-life within the last two weeks. At the national Pro-Life Day of Silent Solidarity, a student was forbidden from conveying her opinions on being pro-life. According to the students attorney, Matt Bowman, “If other students are allowed to wear T-shirts and pass out literature on controversial issues outside of class, then Christian and pro-life students should have the same right.” Under the first amendment, the school was forced the settle and allow him to express his opinions (Brown).
News media can face much backlash due to hasty and/or controversial reporting. Because of this, many news media are performing self-censorship. Television and cinema self-censorship is also used to escape liability from incidents caused by the movies affects on the minds of adolescents. This is seen during an incident where many adolescents tried to imitate the Disney movie