Propaganda is information specifically designed to persuade or mislead, and censorship is the suppression of information deemed objectionable. Although both are just tools, censorship and propaganda are not justifiable in any free society because their entire purpose is to blind and control.
No matter what form it takes, propaganda is a tool used to control the citizens of a society. It’s dangerous because it works. In Germany, women were granted the right to vote in 1918. At the time, a very young political party decided to tap into this newly enfranchised group by carefully tailoring their themes, messages, and language to resonate with them.With this strategy implemented, the Nazi Party saw a dramatic upswing in its number of female voters, …show more content…
Since then, a harsh crackdown on press freedom and a campaign of distortion, misinformation, and propaganda has been enforced by Russian separatists. Local Ukrainian journalists like Larisa Lisnyak find themselves trapped in a no-win situation; they refuse to abandon their country, but they could pay for their reporting with their own lives. In an interview with Vice News, Lisnyak describes the media as being in a state of war, with free journalism as a casualty. It’s not a coincidence that the freedom of the press is usually the first thing to go in pro-dictatorship societies like Ukraine. Without the media reporting back to the people, tyranny can thrive unrestrained. There’s just no place for censorship in a truly democratic society, because when the media can’t reveal important political information, the society is at the mercy of an unchecked government. While censorship seems like something only the corrupt governments of places like Russia or the Ukraine might enforce, the truth is that countries all over the world infringe on press freedom every …show more content…
In 1944, Japan started a unique and dangerous campaign to attack mainland North America by sending more than 9,000 balloons over the Pacific Ocean to land on U.S. soil. These balloons were full of flammable hydrogen, and were armed with incendiary bombs. But despite the balloon story’s intrigue, America's media was completely silent about this new threat. Instead of warning citizens about the national crisis, print and broadcast journalists kept quiet because in January 1945, the U.S. Office of Censorship made them. And by the time the War and Navy departments issued a joint statement announcing that “the possible saving of even one American life… would more than offset any military gain”, it was too late. On May 5th of that year, the Reverend Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife, Elsie, supervised a kids’ church trip to Gearhart Mountain in Oregon. Curious about the strange white object on the ground, the kids circled around it, and one pulled on the fabric. The balloon exploded instantly, killing Mrs. Mitchell and the children. The government statement that came seventeen days later didn’t even mention
No matter what form it takes, propaganda is a tool used to control the citizens of a society. It’s dangerous because it works. In Germany, women were granted the right to vote in 1918. At the time, a very young political party decided to tap into this newly enfranchised group by carefully tailoring their themes, messages, and language to resonate with them.With this strategy implemented, the Nazi Party saw a dramatic upswing in its number of female voters, …show more content…
Since then, a harsh crackdown on press freedom and a campaign of distortion, misinformation, and propaganda has been enforced by Russian separatists. Local Ukrainian journalists like Larisa Lisnyak find themselves trapped in a no-win situation; they refuse to abandon their country, but they could pay for their reporting with their own lives. In an interview with Vice News, Lisnyak describes the media as being in a state of war, with free journalism as a casualty. It’s not a coincidence that the freedom of the press is usually the first thing to go in pro-dictatorship societies like Ukraine. Without the media reporting back to the people, tyranny can thrive unrestrained. There’s just no place for censorship in a truly democratic society, because when the media can’t reveal important political information, the society is at the mercy of an unchecked government. While censorship seems like something only the corrupt governments of places like Russia or the Ukraine might enforce, the truth is that countries all over the world infringe on press freedom every …show more content…
In 1944, Japan started a unique and dangerous campaign to attack mainland North America by sending more than 9,000 balloons over the Pacific Ocean to land on U.S. soil. These balloons were full of flammable hydrogen, and were armed with incendiary bombs. But despite the balloon story’s intrigue, America's media was completely silent about this new threat. Instead of warning citizens about the national crisis, print and broadcast journalists kept quiet because in January 1945, the U.S. Office of Censorship made them. And by the time the War and Navy departments issued a joint statement announcing that “the possible saving of even one American life… would more than offset any military gain”, it was too late. On May 5th of that year, the Reverend Archie Mitchell and his pregnant wife, Elsie, supervised a kids’ church trip to Gearhart Mountain in Oregon. Curious about the strange white object on the ground, the kids circled around it, and one pulled on the fabric. The balloon exploded instantly, killing Mrs. Mitchell and the children. The government statement that came seventeen days later didn’t even mention