right or wrong? or neither?

Can the government ever justify hiding important facts from the population? even if they believe it is for the good of the people?

Should people have the right to voice their opinions even if they are racist, sexist, homophobic or just generally bigoted? Where do we draw the line?

What about violence, should films/tv be censored? what about internet censorship?

I'm interested to know what the general feeling is on this. Hope this sparks off an interesting debate.

dunno about hiding facts from the people .. cause perhaps..its is for the good of the people..on the long run . but about censorship in movies and the internet..i totaly agree with it , but it also depends how its done. like in movies..its usually just CUT! am sure there's a better way of doing that.


Should people have the right to voice their opinions even if they are racist, sexist, homophobic or just generally bigoted? Where do we draw the line?

dont we have freedome of speach here in oman? well dunno..but i suppose not every opinion should be voiced out..cause it may cause problems and chaos. there should be a limit for everything.

The "If you don't like it, don't look at/listen to it" motto bugs me somewhat.

Take an old controversial chestnut like Eminem for example, some people may be offended by his lyrics. Personally, if he wasn't as good-looking as he is (in my opinion) I'd be the first one to bash him. but he's everywhere. on the radio. on mtv, we can't escape it.

and violence on TV. ok, you can turn it off but you've still seen it. and kids might be watching tv and wouldnt necessarily turn it off.

i disagree with banning music/tv shows because a minority is offended and/or commits violent or wrong acts as a result. I'm just wondering how it could ever be possible to strike a balance, because, like it or not, we're faced with the media as it is, we can't pick or choose.

Okay...the goverment hiding stuff. I think thats wrong. This is our world, we NEED to know EVERYTHING that is going on, so as to be fully aware at all times. People deserve to know the truth about everything, it might suck, but I personally believe its better to know. But we all know the government won't ever let us in on everything.

Now for opinions...yes, everyone should be allowed to voice their opinions. Sexist, racist, bigoted, whatever. If they didn't, we wouldn't have this debate would we? I love hearing opinions from bigots because its really interesting the way those kind of negative people think, and wondering how they got those thoughts into their heads. It might p*ss me off to the extreme at times, but hey, whats life without having passion for what you believe in? If you want to preach about God, preach! If you want to preach about how you hate homosexuals, do it! But no one should be expected to listen or agree.

Violence/Censorship in TV and the media...well, there are two sides. When it comes to adults and mature people, honestly I think its stupid. I am choosing to watch this movie, I am choosing to hear whatever is said/done in this movie, I know what I'm getting myself into, so yeah.. Let me watch the **** movie! They censor the word "God" out of "God****it" sometimes. Now I'm sorry, but thats -no comment-! Favour the majority, why don't you? Seriously, I don't think even some of the most religious people would care if a dude in a MOVIE says GOD****IT. Dubbing in films these days is terrible, by the way.

Looking at it from another point, I do think that censorship has its place in the world. When I have children, I don't want to raise them in a place where it's okay to swear on television, where it's okay to show complete sexual nudity on network television, etc. I want to be able to decide for myself and my family what we should be seeing, and not have that dictated to me by the government. It's not like it's easy to get away from television, radio, and the like that has that type of stuff in it. Nowadays though you can program the TV to block certain channels if you don't want your kids to see them.

On the radio too/music, I listen to rap sometimes, and a lot of the music has swearing in it. Of course it gets blanked out of the song. Now do you honestly think that people choosing to listen to a rap station or CD give two sh*ts about the bad language in a song? I highly doubt that.

Internet censorship I think is sort-of important because of personal things going across the net and that you never know who could be reading it and what not.


consider:
- books that are censored (we never got to read these) and I'm not talking about the well-publicized cases such as religious nuts wanting Harry Potter banned.

- companies censoring information abour their products for their own benefit

- censorship in the news, the way the images we see are manipulated so that we get the impression we are meant to - we do not get the full story!

- censorship in the government (perhaps linked to corruption, we're never aware of the extent of this)

come on, people! no one has any thoughts on this?

there was an old thread on Censorship but it didn't get much attention either..

I believe in total unrestricted flow of information. Censorship is unacceptable. Who's to say what should be allowed and what shouldn't. What you find offensive might not be offensive to me. Only paranoid minds think that restricting information increases safety. The purity of a society isn't dictated by the restriction of information in it.

Censorship results in restricting access to the lowest common denominator. You don't want children to hear explicit lyrics, so instead of controlling their access to explicit lyrics you go and ban it to everyone. Why can't an adult decide on his own what to listen to, what to read and what to watch? As for kids, don't they have parents who are responsible for them?

Why is it that the government can't stop sale of cigarettes to kids and yet censors movies to protect people from... uhmm.. what is it exactly that censoring movies protect us from? Why is it that there are no laws enforcing the checking of IDs at bar entrances and yet anything remotely sexual is blocked on the internet? I'd rather kids stopped from watching porn by filters, and stopped from smoking and drinking by laws which are stringently enforced.

I'd rather the government treats me as an adult who can decide what's good and what's bad for himself instead of treating me as child who doesn't know what's bad for him.

You have a point, mux!

Yeah. I want to know why it's allowed to print racial hatred in daily newspapers, pictures of horribly mutilated corpses and bottles up a Bengali butt, but not show someone making out in a movie! What's worse?! (watch "The People vs Larry Flynt" some time...very good!)

Oh yeah Muxy...I saw them doing some ID checks at Senor Picos not so long back. The Sultan School seniors looked well pissed.