The Danger of Censorship

There was an article recently published in the New York Times featuring a photo that hasn't been seen since 2004. The photo shows soldiers returning home in their American flag draped coffins. Taking these sort of photos has been against the law on and off since 1991. The article covers two schools of thoughts. One of them being the supposed reason the government has banned these photos. Their official statement is that the photos are banned to protect the privacy of the families of the soldiers. However, others believe that it is the governments way of manipulating our view of the war in Iraq. Perhaps the government thinks if we don't see the human cost of war, our perceptions will change.

This article relates greatly to our class and journalism as a whole. One of the biggest problems we face as journalists is deciding whether or not we are allowed to print a story. In high school, the principal has the right to decide what goes in and what stays out of print if he thinks a certain story will detract from the educational environment. As students, we want to read stories about the big things going on involving students. Things like violence or drugs and alcohol are the kind of things we can't write about with the freedom we want. Outside of school, in a real newspaper, certains kinds of stories cannot be written. If a story talks about war or something that upsets the people who pay for the paper to be printed then people can lose their jobs. The thing with censorship is, once you allow one thing to be censored it just opens the door for hundreds of others. I believe as journalists we have an obligation to print the truth and sugar coating things doesn't help anyone. Just recently journalists had to be careful of how they worded the news on the recession for fear of freaking people out. But was it really helping anyone by lying about the extent of the recession?

The questions I am left with are:

Does censorship really help the public? Is ignorance really bliss, or will it just hurt us in the long run?
Is the government careful about media coverage on the war in Iraq because of the media causing people to protest in Vietnam?
Does the government really want to protect the families or are they just trying to control our perceptions of the war?