Research into music censorship

Should music videos be censored?

Ofcom is the government approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunication and postal industries of the UK.
It censors music videos that may be inappropriate for people under the age of 18, so it is used to protect Youngers from drugs, sex, violence, racism, weapons or homophobia. 

In the past there have been many incidents of artists being banned or music videos being censored due to inappropriate behaviour that could influence naïve teenagers in the most negative way. 

Some music videos that have been censored consist of Robbie Williams; Rock DJ – As it starts off with Robbie Williams naked stripping off his skin which was highly censored as it contains gory images. Another example of censored songs is Sean Kingston; Beautiful Girls – As he mentions the word ‘Suicidal’ which got changed to ‘In denial’.

Eminem has been censored on many different occasions as his lyrics always consist of inappropriate words and phrases. For example in his music video Stan it involved suicidal and murder, however some of the swear words have been censored so younger viewers don’t start thinking that swearing is acceptable as parents wouldn’t want these songs having a negative effect on their children’s attitude and behaviour. 

In our media lesson we had a debate about Rihanna and whether her music videos should be censored or not. We were roll playing and within our debate we had Rihanna, her biggest fan, a record label, parents for, parents against, kiss radio station and MTV. 

Rihanna was talking about how her music that she produces is very good and it helps her earn a lot of money and she believes that she should continue to be looked up as a role model as she doesn’t think that she is doing anything wrong and her music should just be enjoyed.
Her biggest fan raised the points that Rihanna is actually a good person and that everyone should just appreciate her music.

The record label mentioned that they are just doing their own job which is to release music, however Rihanna isn’t famous for being a role model, just a singer so it’s a choice of these young teenage girls to idolise her.
Parents that were for Rihanna spoke about how good parents should educate their children well enough for them to know not to copy what is shown on TV and music videos.

Parents against were arguing that some of the things Rihanna does in her music videos shouldn’t even be shown on TV as it is inappropriate and unpleasant and regardless of good parenting or not it’s a bad influence.
Kiss radio station can only play cleaned and censored music therefore they believe that Rihanna needs to tone down a bit as they believe that she is a role model to little girls so therefore she needs to be cleaner.

MTV decided that young teenagers shouldn’t be exposed to drugs, sex and violence when they are most naïve as it could negatively influence them in to thinking that these famous singers are doing the right thing.

Advantages
There are many advantages of censoring music videos. These advantages could consist of..

:- Preventing the public display of disrespect to any particular individual or community
:- Children are prevented from learning things that could negatively effect them in future
:- It shields the morals of society
:- It retrains the use of Obscenity
:- It restricts the abundance of violence used in music videos

Disadvantages
Some of the many disadvantages of censorship are...

:- Freedom of speech is compromised
:- Prevents ideas from flowing freely
:- Creativity is restricted
:- Used to control people
:- May be used to block out legitimate criticism

In conclusion I think that music videos should be censored as teenagers are very naïve and vulnerable when they are within the age group of 13-17. Therefore by seeing some of their favourite celebrities and singers behave the way they do on TV and also hearing the way they use inappropriate language, teenagers would get easily influenced into behaving negatively towards friends and family.
Also many young teenagers look up to these celebrities and singers as role models, so therefore they would copy the way they behave thinking they’re ‘cool’.