One of the main rights to an individual is his/her freedom of expression. This means the individual has the freedom to communicate ideas without restraint be it orally or in print or by other means. Freedom of expression itself can be divided into many.
• Economic freedom
• Religious freedom
• Freedom of movement
• Self defense
However religious freedom can only be applied to some countries. As for Maldives freedom of expression or not it is prohibited for a citizen of Maldives to embrace any religion except Islam. So by default this freedom if not there.
Freedom of press if the right to publish media services like magazine, newspaper or other printed matter without government restrictions and are subject to only laws of libel, obscenity, sedition etc.
Freedom of press is mainly affected by censorship is the suppression of speech or the public communication which may be considered.
• Objectionable
• Harmful
• Sensitive
There are many types of censorship
• Cooperate censorship
• Military censorship
• Moral censorship
• Religious censorship
• Political censorship
We can take a look at political censorship a bit deeper. Sometimes a new source forms an alliance or political affiliation with either side of a country’s government. Political affiliation will result in a biased and corrupted media. This will have negative impact on the society like changing people’s view about a government. This is because a political affiliation within media can influence the types of news and the angles in which news is depicted thus leading to superseding of ideology rather than popularity. This sometimes leads to plutocracy.
When talking about the roles and responsibilities we have to think about who is responsible for upholding this rights of its citizen. This is the main role of the government in a democracy. A government which cannot protect its citizen from violation of their right is not considered to be democratic. Government has the responsibility to uphold the rule of law within the constitution.
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