june holiday blog task.

In a country where many races and religions exist, Singapore has to adopt Szilagyi's view of social responsibility. Singer's view of freedom of expression is not practical in our overly sheltered country where many Singaporeans are conservative and not daring in expressing what they really think. When David Irving denied the existence of the Holocaust, it caused much outrage and uproar in Austria, thus causing him to be convicted and imprisoned. Seeing that freedom of expression has such negative effects, social responsibility as stated by Szilagyi is better in preventing racial riots and cultural or religious mockery.

Though Singer's viewpoint will allow the people of a country to understand other people and races better through the different issues and feelings brought up, the lack of control of speech might result in unwanted chaos. This might then disrupt the initial peace of a country. In Singapore, where we are just a small and vulnerable country, we cannot afford to have racial or religious conflicts and disagreements. The tension gained from these disagreements will be enough to cause the downfall of Singapore. If we look back at history, we would know that there was once a period of many racial riots, for example, the Maria Hertogh riots, where race was pretty much the main factor that led to the riots. The disagreements about who was to gain custody of Maria stirred up some unhappy feelings and led to the race riots in Singapore then. If Singer's views are supported now, will it cause as much uproar as it did in the past? If it will, then it is not at all beneficial to the progress and harmony of our nation.

Therefore, we should take a more responsible approach to maintaining the cultural and religious harmony in Singapore and support Szilagyi's view. For the welfare of the people in a country, freedom of speech has to be highly controlled, if not, the consequences might be as disastrous as the effects of the release of cartoons in a Danish newspaper that mocked the Prophet Muhammad. The 'mass demonstrations, diplomatic rows and economic boycotts' following the saga was unintentional and not expected to happen by the Danish and Norwegian newspaper publishers. They only wanted to 'make a statement about the extensive self-censorship that has developed within news media..', but ended up with a bad taste in the mouth. This clearly shows that a 'no holds barred' attitude does not work out in our society today, thus the need for censorship arises. Especially the mass media, which has the capability of sending information all around the world. It is the medium that has to be constantly reviewed with the changing news and events. I especially agree with Szilagyi's view that 'freedom of speech has never been a static value, and the responsibilities of the press evolve with every new social and political development around the world'. The importance of censors and restriction on freedom of speech is essential for any democracy to function with integrity and responsibility.

Thus, i believe that Szilagyi's viewpoint should be the correct view to adopt in our ever-changing, multicultural, multiracial and cosmopolitan sunny island, Singapore:)