Alexandria Acevedo English 3152 Sec01 Apri 23, 2013 Final Draft Censorship and its Grey Areas

Every nation in the world, including the most open of societies, restricts the public disclosure of information to some extent, but the actual limits imposed by a system of national security classification are often a topic of debate. No one seems to agree on a specific set of guidelines on what should or should not be censored and classified. News organizations, public advocacy groups and the general public, usually tend to favor an increased and indiscriminate disclosure of national information, while government agencies tend to resist pressure to release more. Is there a way to resolve this matter in a way in which both parties will be satisfied? There doesnt seem to be a right answer about what and how much to classify, particularly since the parties assign different importance to values of security and disclosure. Information can be very subjective, what may be of vital importance to a government may hold no meaning or interest to another. With that being said, should the government be allowed to blatantly edit, manipulate and withhold information and lie to its nation all in the guise of national security? I do not believe so. But if there is no universally acceptable right answer to the question of what exactly to classify, it may still be possible to identify some information that should be censored and/or kept under wraps. The newspaper LA Times calls classification and censorship: critical national security tools and states that The ability to deny information to an enemy and to protect sensiti ve intelligence sources and methods is vital to our nation's well-being. If it is true that censorship is a tool that is instrumental in keeping the nation safe and out of harms way, why does it seem to be causing more trouble than good? Perhaps this is just the uneducated opinion of one such as

myself with restricted access to data and secrets regarded with care by our nations leaders. I strongly believe that the public should not be kept in the dark about affairs that directly affect them. The public is often treated as a child by the government, too ignorant to know what it really wants, in need of protection and shielding from the harsh realities of the world. The government should not be allowed to lie or manipulate information because of the potential for disaster these actions possess. If the government is allowed and encouraged by the public to withhold information they could easily use this as a means of evading public oversight and accountability and could be used to conceal gross misconduct. Humans have a tendency to abuse their power once they obtain it. A perfect example of this is The Stanford prison experiment, conducted in 1971 by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. Twenty-four male students were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. The entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days because of the extreme abuse the prisoners were receiving. After only a day of power the guards began to abuse it and that was only control over 10 people. Imagine the temptation to abuse or misuse your power when it is held over 300,000,000 people (estimated US population according to U.S. Census Bureau). In times of war the status of the country is of the concern to all its citizens, not just the government or the privileged few that are in power. Censorship and lies have not only been used for the noble purpose of keeping morale up, but also to pursue personal interests and vendettas as has become painfully clear in the last years. An example that does not include a war we are

currently fighting in (though it could be easily included) is the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. An alleged attack on U.S. ships by North Vietnam off its coast, was used by President Lyndon Johnson (an "unprovoked" attack he told the nation) to win legislative authority, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, to justify the war in Vietnam. But it was an incident that did not happen and Johnson knew it even as he escalated Vietnam into the full-blown blood bath it was to become. "Hell," he told his secretary of state just a few days after the resolution passed, "those dumb, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish!" Lying, censoring and manipulating is so intrinsic to the nature of government, that even the truth about old lies is concealed to protect new lies. In 2001, a National Security Agency study found that officials had actually doctored documents in covering up the truth about the Tonkin Gulf incident. But the new report of that old cover-up was itself delayed for years for fear that its release would cast doubt on the intelligence that the Bush administrations was using to justify an invasion of Iraq. In World War II newspapers and television news were censored as well, in order to boost morale. The trend of censorship has been a common theme in wars throughout America and across the world, and is a dangerous side effect for war. The topic of censorship is one so talked about that some authors have picked it as a topic in their books. For example: Walter Lippmann in his book Public Opinion or George Orwell in his classic novel Animal Farm. Why do we accept and condone leaders and officials that lie to us? The same reason that we accept the sky is blue and fire is hot. People lie. Leaders are people. The appropriate question is why do we not hold our leaders accountable for their knowingly misleading the public? The government tends to hide behind the guise of doing what is best for the nation and protecting the public in order to justify the censoring and withholding of information. Some people just shrug and content themselves by saying that they are the ones that are in charge and so they must know

what they are doing. We are who put them in charge. The public is as red-blooded and oxygen breathing as the leaders and as such we deserve to be in the know, just like them. Do not get me wrong. I am not suggesting that the schematics to the white house or to the new missile we are building be available on google. I am just asking to not be blatantly lied to, misled and manipulated into supporting bloodshed in a war for oil or a president that abuses his power and influence..

Works Cited Fletcher, Martin. "LBJ tape Confirms Vietnam War Error". The Times. (November 7, 2001)

Goyette, Charles. "LewRockwell, Anti-war, Anti-state, Pro-market." The Three Biggest Lies the Government Is Telling You. N.p., 27 Jan 2012. Web. 20 Mar 2013.

Leonard, J.William. "When Secrecy Gets out of Hand." Los Angeles Time 10 August 2011, Op-Ed n. pag. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.

Zimbardo, P. G. (1971). The Power and Pathology of Imprisonment. Congressional Record. (Serial No. 15, 1971-10-25). Hearings before Subcommittee No. 3, of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session on Corrections, Part II, Prisons, Prison Reform and Prisoner's Rights: California. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.