Media Censorship in Mexico and Australia PDF

Running head: MEDIA CENSORSHIP IN MEXICO AND AUSTRALIA
Media Censorship in Mexico and Australia
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MEDIA CENSORSHIP IN MEXICO AND AUSTRALIAIntroduction
Media censorship is a historical and global phenomenon. The governments of the ancient
civilizations started practicing censorship (Billiani 2014) as a justification of the rules and
regulations to maintain the law and order in the state. The oldest example of censorship,
according to history, is that the famous Greek philosopher, Socrates was forced to drink poison
as he defied the state orders to censor his philosophical teachings. As the societies progressed
and technological revolution has come, censorship is now applied on the media. This is a
phenomenon that opposes the right to democracy and freedom of speech of the citizens to serve
any particular objective of the states (Hassan and Sutherland 2016). This essay highlights the
comparison between the media censorship of Mexico and Australia.
Discussion
Media is a very important part of democratic society. It is the face and mouth of people of
a nation (Cox 2013). However, it is seen in many countries and many times that the government
has imposed censorship on the media to control the citizens by withholding vital information
from them. Today’s media has two major forms, print and digital. In the modern world, digital
media plays a major role in influencing the society. Internet is one of the biggest forms of media.
Australia and Mexico are both electoral democracies. However, Mexicans face rigid censorship
in media contents than the Australians. According to the reports of Freedom House (2018),
Mexico has a score of 39 in internet freedom out of 100, while Australia scores 22. Mexico has
the status of partly free while Australia has earned the status of free country in terms of internet
censorship. Hence, Australia enjoys more free internet than Mexico. It is also found from the
reports of freedom house that Australia has blocked none of the decisive sections listed by

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MEDIA CENSORSHIP IN MEXICO AND AUSTRALIAfreedom house, while Mexico has blocked two sections, criticism of the authorities and
corruption. Although Mexico has laws of freedom of press and speech in the internet, only two
states, Tabasco and Veracruz, have imposed new restrictions on using social media (Garcia
2014). To avoid any kind of mass disturbance through social media like, twitter and Facebook,
the government of Mexico imposed restrictions on few things. However, after introducing new
telecommunication law in 2014, internet penetration in the country has increased, but the threats
to the journalists have increased, which is an alarming situation. On the other hand, Australia has
not imposed any block or filter on social media usage, but it has been planning to introduce
regulations on giving the access to encrypted communication to the government (Clun 2017).
This has not been welcome by the people and is seen as censorship. As the world is becoming
more and more vulnerable to radicalism, internet censorship is increasing too. Mexico is partly
free in this matter, while Australia is a free country.
News censorship is a sensitive issue in Mexico but not much in Australia. According to
bbc, both the countries have laws to regulate the print and digital news, but Mexico experiences
extremism. Reporters Without Borders had ranked Mexico 149 out of 180 countries in the World
Press Freedom Index 2016, that indicates that Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries for
the journalists (indexoncensorship.org 2018). The country also earned negative reputation for not
solving the crimes against the journalists. Although the country has laws for freedom of press
and speech, the journalists have faced threats and attacks and sometimes murder as they tried to
investigate the criminal activities and corruption (Garcia 2014). On the other hand, the media of
Australia does enjoy more freedom in publishing news and reports. According to the Freedom
House, the Freedom of the Press score is 22 for Australia in 2017, while Mexico’s score is 64
(Freedomhouse.org 2017). This gives the status ‘free’ to Australia. People can easily access to