Censorship

Fr. Leo C. Pabayo, SJ .

WHEN we are born into this world, our parents see to it that our fragile life is protected from anything thing harmful. This is so in terms of the food we eat and the environment that we are exposed to.

As we gradually grow we learn to take in more of the food that our body can digest. This is also true with what goes on around us. Our parents will help us gradually adjust to what go on around us seeing to it that nothing may be harmful to our body and to our minds.

Teachers gradually take over more and more of this responsibility. Schools are what all these are for. Thus education is an institution that is an essential obligation of the government. Even if we have already finished schooling the government still sees to it that we are protected from harm from what go on around us.

One kind of harm is the harm to the mind. Thus governments institute censorship. An example of this is a law obligating the mass media outlets to warn citizens that certain images may be emotionally disturbing to some people.

Censorship is also required of them particularly for the sake of the young who still need continuing education on matters that they have not learned enough of in the school.

Often object of censorship are matters pertaining to human sexuality. The young need to have a right understanding of human sexuality in their personal sexual relationships because this will have repercussions on their lifelong personal relationships in marriage and family life.

Censorship of pornographic materials are usually the object of censorship. But there are others also like too much violence in movies that can consciously or subconsciously influence people’s behavior.

Not everything that comes from the developed countries in the world are good for the Filipino. It is wrong to say that we have to adjust to new developments in the world regarding censorship and leave it at that.

We as a people also need to make a judgment on whether what are peddled in the mass media in the developed countries are good or not good for the moral life of our people.

MTRCB Chairperson Rachel Arenas is right in saying that the Board’s “regulatory power would ensure that all online video platforms operating in the country are made to comply to with contemporary Filipino values.” It has been doing this well.

Netflix leaves much to be desired on this. I have seen Netflix movies that border on pornography that we do not want our young to be exposed to. Recently, Philippine Star reported that “Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog said it will order Netflix to block access to….French film ‘Cuties’ that contains images of child exploitation.” (Note that the Philippines has been reported to be the worst country in child sex exploitation.)

Doing away with censorship is like “throwing out the baby with the bath.” To cavalierly say, as one congressman does that the Board of Censor’s concern about lack of censorship in Netfix is “imbecilic” is wrong.

What our public officials should be most concerned about is censorship that unnecessarily encroach on the people’s freedom of expression – the kind of censorship that we see in Communist China and North Korea.

Although we do not have their kind of censorship our Congressmen actually bordered on this kind of censorship when they shut down ABS-CBN. If it is true that ABS-CBN unduly censored the campaign materials of some officials in the last election the Board of Censors should have stepped in then already to censure its political bias. But to close down ABS-CBN for that is worse than “throwing out the baby with the bath.”

It is harmful to the public particularly in this time of the pandemic when ABS-CBN has been most competent in informing the public on pandemic matters – not not to mention the injustice inflicted on the employees of ABS-CBN who were forced to join the ranks of the unemployed at this time.