by Jay Williams

Created on: May 23, 2008

Culture, Censorship and Us
Culture is an unusual phenomenon. It is all too easy to become so acclimatised to our own cultures that we forget that the world is an extremely large place and cultural differences reflect this, a topic discussed recently, between myself and three colleagues of varying cultural backgrounds.

We Britons assume ourselves to be privileged in this respect. Britain is a democracy and therefore, in theory, we may say what we please and engage in untempered expression. The media, we assume, should support this, remaining free of censorship and reporting on what editors or producers see fit. This, as we know, is not quite the full picture, yet, in many respects causing offence being the obvious exception the media, within the U.K seem to report quite freely.

Yang, a 24 year old graduate student from China, believes that censorship in her own country is too strict, noting that: "The Chinese version of Google frequently produces censored results; a great deal of information is withheld". This edited version of Google shocked me, yet, perplexing as this was, the information that followed seemed truly shocking. Yang asked if we knew of the events that occurred in Tiananmen Square. Everyone in the group responded positively, leading Yang to note that "Many people in China don't know about it, they may know the date and the time but not the details". She told us of how her father was a student leader at the protest, insisting that, if this were not the case, she herself would by unaware of the event. I found it tremendously hard to contemplate this fact. Tiananmen Square, to me, has become an iconic image of protest and it is shocking that many Chinese people have been kept in the dark over what was a highly important event in their history.

Reporters without borders, a non-governmental organisation that advocates freedom of the press, ranks the People's Republic of China's journalists as some of the most restricted in the world along with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Cuba and North Korea. The information provided by Yang displays why this report and China's positioning seem justified.

Another of my colleagues, Said, an experienced journalist, 33, from Tanzania, was perhaps, even more damning of censorship in her country. She noted that: "In Tanzania the internet is heavily censored, access to certain information is restricted. Journalists are limited in what they can cover". Said went on to describe the plight one of particular newspaper in Tanzania

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