Till today, the use of censorship in modern society is still widely debated whether to do with it or not. Conservatives will feel that it is the only way to protect the people from "evil" influence but the Liberals will feel very restricted and will call for a freedom of expression. However censorship has its pros and cons for its existence on Earth.
What is censorship? Censorship is the use of state or group power to control freedom of expression. In a modern sense censorship consists of any attempt to suppress information, points of view, or method of expression such as art, or profanity. Censorship is commonly used by social groups, organized religions, corporations and governments.
Why censor? Firstly, Singapore being a multiracial nation is home to 4 races namely Eurasians, Malays, Chinese and Indians. In importing books from other countries where racial issues are not considered as important, it may contain information that could potentially cause an outbreak of racial riots. thus we have to had censorship to protect our racially vulnerable nation.
Not only that, children have known to have a very malleable mind. So in order to defend the minds of the children, this move has to be done to protect them from the evil clutches of bad influence. Not only children are vulnerable to such things even teenagers also become seriously influenced by music etc. They have more prone to showing attitude to teachers and committed more crimes than others.
Last but not the least, every country's war secrets. In wartime, explicit censorship is carried out with the intent of preventing the release of information that might be useful to an enemy. Typically it involves keeping times or locations secret, or delaying the release of information (e.g., an operational objective) until it is of no possible use to enemy forces. The moral issues here are often seen as somewhat different, as release of tactical information usually presents a greater risk of casualties among one's own forces and could possibly lead to loss of the overall conflict. During World War I letters written by British soldiers would have to go through censorship. This consisted of officers going through letters with a black marker and crossing out anything which might compromise operational secrecy before the letter was sent. The World War II catchphrase "Loose lips sink ships" was used as a common justification to exercise official wartime censorship and encourage individual restraint when sharing potentially sensitive information.
A well-known example of sanitization policies comes from the USSR under Joseph Stalin, where publicly used photographs were often altered to remove people whom Stalin had condemned to execution. Though past photographs may have been remembered or kept, this deliberate and systematic alteration to all of history in the public mind is seen as one of the central themes of Stalinism and totalitarianism. More recently, the official exclusion of television crews from locales where coffins of military dead were in transit has been cited as a form of censorship. This particular example obviously represents an incomplete or failed form of censorship, as numerous photographs of these coffins are often printed in newspapers, magazines, and on the web.
However censorship has an end to its merits.
We Singaporeans have been quoted by outsiders as pure and innocent people. And why is this so? This is because we lacked global exposure, causing us to be trapped in a small nation's view. When only people are exposed to outside world, then they can mature and develop a set of beliefs.
Humans now are protected by human rights and organizations upholding those rights. In a free society, we should have freedom to do things we like, and not to be controlled by censorship.
Thus on the whole, censorship is much more of a pros side rather than a cons side.
