American Censorship: The Real Story

American Censorship: The Real Story

When the United States Constitution was originally signed, September 17, 1787, it did not include clauses designed to protect our essential freedoms. In fact, this fatal flaw of the Constitution to guarantee these rights made it the most frequently debated historical document of its time. While the framers of our constitution did not see the necessity in formally declaring these rights, they quickly realized they would receive no peace until they were legally declared before the nation. This was the birth of the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution, ratified December 15, 1791. Among these was the right to Free Speech, a right that of recent has been all but stripped from the hands of the American citizenry while the government cites its own indelible duty to censor what is viewed or heard by the general public.

Our minds are presented with images daily. Some are good, some bad, but most are just subtle enough that we don’t even recognize the fact that we have just internalized a message. This flaw in our ability to recognize these messages has been taken advantage of since the founding of this nation.

Everything we view on television, be it network or cable television, has been carefully screened. Nothing has made it to the air waves by pure coincidence or circumstance. The media is a carefully filtered, powerful tool. Although the first acts of censorship in America were subtle, in recent years we have become much more blatant in abusing the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. Whereas it was made formally illegal to bar the citizenry from protesting unfair practices in government, during the civil rights movement, the government allowed police brutality, lynchings, and other forms of domestic terrorism, to prevent protestors from further changing their carefully constructed society. When this affect did not last, they begin too filter the radio and television broadcasts. Journalists were told what they could and could not report on the programs. Some were even forced to tell lies in order to force compliance upon the citizenry.

Even in 2006, we are still not being told the entire truth about what is happening behind the scenes of our government. Take for instance Flight 93, the jumbo jet that mysteriously crashed over a field September 11, 2001. Witnesses over a 10 mile radius, agreed to seeing a unidentified military jet shoot down the commercial airliner over and empty field, only to speed off in the opposite