Activity 4: Censorship and Modern Media

These days, there are different kinds of censorship such as book banning, propaganda, and media manipulation. I researched ‘The Diary of a young girl’ by Anne Frank, which were banned in 1983 by the Alabama State Textbook Committee. The reason why the book were banned in USA is that even though this is the incredible story of an ever-hopeful and ever-wistful young girl who is eventually killed in the Holocaust, despite the girl incredibly horrible enemies and fate, this remarkable teenage girl still believes in “the basic goodness of mankind.”

In addition, I researched about propaganda. I thought North Korea has a lot of propaganda news, so I researched and found one of North Korea propaganda news. According to Jean H. Lee who is a journalist,

“PYONGYANG, North Korea: A framed poster on the wall of a kindergarten classroom shows bright-eyed children brandishing rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless American soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth. "We love playing military games knocking down the American bastards," reads the slogan printed across the top. Another poster depicts an American with a noose around his neck. "Let's wipe out the U.S. imperialists," it instructs. For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count. Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones – a favorite schoolyard game, she says.”

North Korea is the spreading of information to children.

Moreover, I researched about Media Manipulation. When people ordered food and ate it, people cannot believe the advertisement. Because when people saw the food picture and read the comment, it looks very delicious. For example, Tim Horton’s smoothie advertisement tells people that it is real fruit. However, the smoothie’s taste is like syrup. In addition, when LEGO advertise their product on TV, they used science fiction and the product is moving without people’s hands to looks interesting. Even though LEGO put ‘the product cannot move. And this is not real”, the font size is very small on TV.

Therefore, censorship has different types in the twenty-first century. Censorship is used many ways such as book banning, propaganda, and media manipulation.