Do you remember when you were a kid and you believed everything your parents told you? When Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy were all real? Well, today there are still people who reside in this state, but not with their parents, but rather their government. In countries such as North Korea, Eritrea, and Saudi Arabia have censored media and little to no access to the truth (cpj.org). It isn’t safe to be told lies and not the truth. Media should be free and not restricted, and everyone should have freedom of the press, as to not take away one’s sense of liberty.
When you take into account all of the reasons why withholding information and altering the truth from the people is wrong, it becomes a much bigger issue. First of all, the total population estimate in only the top 10 most censored countries is about 2,180,029,200 people which is about 28% of the entire world population (worldometers.info). In our lives, that’s like when your teacher tells each person their score on a test. If your class has 30 people in it, that means that 9 people would be told an incorrect score, either higher or lower than what they actually got. That wouldn’t be fair for those people because it wouldn’t be an accurate representation of what they know, and they won’t know what they need to review in the future or what they do well on. That inaccurate representation is what more than 28% of our world has to live with their entire lives. They don’t know what they need to look out for or what’s actually going on in the world, or even their own country. In most of the top 10 countries, the media is filled with propaganda and loving articles of their dearest leader (cpj.org). When a country’s citizens are oblivious to the world around them, they can’t make good, educated decisions for themselves, taking away their personal liberties.
Of course, you might make the argument that it is beneficial to have a huge group of people that follow their leader blindly, and there are some good reasonings behind that such as unity or that people will be calm and not confused and they can just go about their lives ready to defend their country at any second. However, the fact that there isn’t resistance to the leader is a problem. When a leader doesn’t have anyone to keep them from making bad or foolish decisions. Without the people voting on an issue, or at least people in legislature/ Judicial systems keeping the balance in check, these bad decisions are going to go through, eventually ruining the country. Also, these tyrant rulers lie to the people to gain their trust and ensure their cooperation. According to Brittanica.com, “dictators employ propaganda to ensure and sustain their public support”. The basic definition of propaganda is information of a misleading nature used to promote a particular political view. This shows that dictators lie to get support and cooperation from their people. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to blindly follow someone wo is going to lie to me. Therefore, it isn’t good to have people recklessly follow their leader.
When we are faced with problems, we shouldn’t avoid them, we have to find solutions. In many ways, these people are being lied to. This is an unjust tactic used by many leaders to avoid opposition. Would you want to be lied to? When other people face terrible issues such as these, we need to take action to fix this wrong and make it right again.
Works Cited
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia and John M. Cunningham. Dictatorship. 2019. March 2019. .
Current World Population. 5 March 2019. March 2019. .
ejc. kejncijned. kjencine, ejncejnt.
Guide, Ben's. Checks and Balances. n.d. March 2019. .
Orwell, George. 1984. London: Secker & Warburg, 1949.
Staff, CPJ. 10 Most Censored Countries. 2015. March 2019. .
