UNIVERSIDAD METROPOLITANA DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACION

Freedom: What is the cost of it?

What is your opinion about filtering the news to broadcast or to include in newspapers?
Felipe Meza 02/04/2012

Samuel Fernandez/DOE Post Intermediate/English Deparment/Facultad de Historia, Geografa y Letras

In our generation, communication became one of the essential activities because of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and such social networks. If you are youngster, there is no complete integration if you have not access to internet. Nowadays meetings, homework, and even crimes are planned throughout internet. It is because of that that governments had to put some surveillance over the private lives of their citizens. In my opinion, freedom of speech should be granted for people as long as they do not break other peoples freedom. Since early beginnings of this phenomenon known as Mass Media in 1927, United States signed the Radio Act. This law gave the government the power to grant and deny licenses and to assign frequencies and power levels for each licensee (Wikipedia, 2012). The Federal Communications Commission as successor of the Radio Act in 1934, extended the control over telegraph and telephones. For some people, this infringed the First Amendment of US Constitution, related to Freedom of Speech. Federal Communications Commission still works in the USA.

Federal Communications Commissions Logo, as seen in some communicational devices

Countries as Venezuela in South America (digital, 2012) or China in Asia (Watch, 2012) are examples of repression from the government. Totalitarian regimes repress freedom of speech and press as well in order to people to have no opinion or to boycott the right to be informed. This is not a practice of totalitarian government only, but of democratic governments too. On the other hand, here in Chile we have BriCib (Brigada del CiberCrimen, Cyber Crime Brigade, in English), a branch of PDI (Policia de Investigaciones, equivalent to USAs FBI) which is worried about thwart crimes related to child pornography and electronic financial crimes (PDI, 2012). BriCib, along with other fifteen countries, was involved in the wreck of a huge pornography network. Their job is keeping a balance in internet without interfere our common use of it. Freedom of expression and freedom of press must be granted by the pertinent organizations. These should be independent from the government and grant access to objective and timely information. Nevertheless, the organization should work, as well, supervising what the internet users do. It is impossible thinking about a world without opinion and differences; because of this, dialogue and debate are good ways of expressing our thoughts in a responsible and respectful way.

Picture illustrating the importance of Freedom of Press

Bibliography
(April 1st, 2012). PDI: http://www.policia.cl/paginas/brigadas/bg-bricib/bg-bricib.htm (April 1st,2012). M24digital: http://m24digital.com/en/2010/10/30/venezuela-organizations-denounceviolations-of-freedom-of-expression/ (April 1st,2012).Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/news/2008/07/02/china-olympics-media-freedomcommitments-violated (April 1st, 2012). Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Radio_Commission#The_Radio_Act_of_1927