Hi, everybody. I’m Mike Staver. This is Mondays with Mike, a weekly video series where I answer questions from people just like you. Here’s this week’s question.
“When is censorship warranted?”
Man, you guys are really starting to send in some good questions. When is censorship warranted? You know what? I’m not sure I’m equipped. I’m not sure I’m informed enough to answer that question. Very controversial question. When is censorship warranted?
Probably in my own bias, I think censorship is warranted when that thing that you’re censoring would do significant harm to another person or group of people. For instance, I was working recently and got word of something that was happening to someone. It was a very negative thing going on in their life and the group I was leading wanted to put out a statement of our opinion about that person and what they did. I said, “No.” It was not very popular and I censored it, I said, “No, we’re just not going to do that.”
They thought that by not coming out with a statement that we were endorsing it and that was not true. I think if it does significant harm and that the good that it does doesn’t outpace the harm that it does to the unintended consequences, it should probably be censored.
Here’s the deal with censorship though, once you start down that path, it becomes very, very, very slippery so you need to be very careful about how far you let that go. I’m not exactly sure why you ask that question but I will tell you that in very, very few cases is it warranted.
I will tell you, I censor comments I make, I put a filter on my own face, so before you go thinking about censoring somebody else, probably ought to censor yourself, you know what I mean? Probably you ought to think through it, probably ought to. All right, that’s it for today. Thanks for watching.
Do you have a burning question for Mike to answer on another episode of Mondays with Mike? Submit the form below!
