Soudabeh Sabour
Prof. Brown
English 1B
August 5, 2013
Independent
Media
Have you ever heard some news about a school mate that
later you found out it was wrong or
intentionally made up or exaggerated? Do you prefer to hear news as it is or do
you like to get the second or third hand news decorated in a story maker’s
mind? This bad habit among people has more psychological roots which are out of
our topic, but in a bigger scale it can be found among the journalist and
media. Although the first and most important role of media is supposed to be
publishing reliable and first hand news, but it is not what really happens.
News are changed for many reasons, more of political purposes. Media, as a
business, tries to keep its business and increase the benefits. That is why
same news will be revealed differently from different media. This biased action
is observed in media on publishing violation news as well. I think an unbiased
worldwide free media with free independent journalist, authors, and critic writes can
solve this problem and everyone anywhere, can reach the first hand news of any
kind. So people can have their own choice to interpret the news and judge.
A
free media has a good feature which is the first hand news with no biased
interpretation to target a goal or a specific group of people. Aung San Suu Kyi who is a Burmese opposition politician
and chairperson of the National League for Democracy in Burma in a land mark
political in the 1990 general election, has called for “completely free,
independent and unbiased journalism”. But her speech was censored by election commission
when she talked about the lack of freedom to speak and no access to get
military information. But she is still encouraging her people to be free from
fears. She believes that democracy with no freedom is impossible. She thinks
that, “Strict media laws and censorship deprived the people of freedom of
speech, freedom to write, freedom to listen and freedom of expression.”
Throughout
the history people have fought and sacrificed their lives to get human rights
against those who had taken it from them. But how can we feel we have our basic
right to hear and interpret the news while we get the second hand information?
We think we are free and have access to the fastest type of information
publication, which is internet. But still we do not have access to violation
news as it really is. According to The Media Association, in a country like
Turkey, internet is censored based on law.
“ The Media Association’s
Internet committee completed a report in July 2013 on Internet censorship in
Turkey that called for amending Law No. 5651, which regulates the Internet, in
a manner that would support freedom of thought and expression and in accordance
with the Council of Europe‘s Convention on Cybercrime.” In this country some
websites are not accessible. How can this country claim to be a democratic
country, while being part of Europe? I
think internet should not be controlled or filtered by governments. This is not
fair.
About
four years ago in Iran, after the cheating on the presidential election, many
people especially younger ones came to streets to fight for their votes. But
the government killed most of them and captured those who tried to take photos
or videos of what was done to unarmed people. I was a witness of the violence
happened at that time but the reality was never reported. The crime done by
government’s reaction was so inhumane that they were scared the news be
published to the world, while they claim of having a religious based democracy.
People in Iran do not have access to a non-filtered internet. YouTube is a
dream to be opened. Even personal activities are monitored. If there was a free
media to show this cruelty, Iran’s government could not break the human rights
of its people. With the excuse of improper things for children and things
against Islamic roles, they are having restrictions on everything.
How
do you respond if you see a violation is happening in your neighbor’s house? Do
you just shut your door and close your eyes? Or do you show a reaction to help?
How can we feel comfortable if our neighbor is having a problem? It might have
happened to us. In that case do we expect others to help us? By having a free and independent media, I believe,
rate of violation will get to zero. I think if violators know that everyone
will get to know them and will react, will not do any violation.
Internet
as the fastest, easiest and the most accessible toll of media to publish news,
is censored even in countries like United States and in Europe. According to
Eric Fish, in his article of
“Is Internet Censorship Compatible with Democracy?” , internet censorship is in conflict with democracy. According to the
definition of democrecy, internet censorship is not accepted. Recently the
Liberal Party in Australia tried to perform internet censorship law, but it was
not seccesful. In Iran, the censorship regime performs this dirty trick in this
way. They block domain name servers, and use routers to slow or stop a user’s Internet
connection if they try to go to web sites that they do not want public to have
access to.
In
this proposal essay I tried to find a solution for the problem of violation
censorship and media. As free human beings we have the right to have access to
the most recent, unbiased, first hand information from all around the world
without any media in between to move it to its own benefit direction. If so,
there might be people who care about what happens to their own species in other
parts of the world and protest for them. This might act as a stop light for
violation. If such an independent media existed, those young boys and girls
killed by Iran’s terrorist government would be alive now.
Work cited
1.
Worldpress. March 16. 2012. Web. August 6.
2013.
3.
Fish, Eric. “Is Internet Censorship Compatible with Democracy?”
Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and
the Law (2) (2009): n, page. Web. August 6, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment