Amidst funding cuts from public broadcasting services and the decline of traditional media, the validity and ethicality of censoring information are being questioned across the U.S. Although knowledge is power, it seems many only hold that maxim to be true for knowledge they agree with.
In July, $1.1 billion was rescinded from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports local media, like NPR and PBS, with federal funding. This cut effectively shut down the Corporation, leaving NPR and PBS facing severe funding deficiencies that are impacting their information distribution strategies.
Throughout history, news and information have been a source of power. From the papal society in feudal Europe to censorship during wartime, information has long been linked to the elite. It was only the advent of the printing press that brought knowledge to ordinary people.
Today, despite controversy surrounding potential censorship of news, the average person now has the unique ability to spread knowledge independently through social media and other platforms. Traditional media may be declining, but that movement is sparking a paradigm shift toward everyday people having more power to share their beliefs. The distribution of information is no longer restricted to a select few — just as we learned to consume information, we can now also spread information ourselves.
Nevertheless, as that power distribution is reshaped, we must also recognize the value and purpose of speech. People will inevitably have opposing viewpoints, and that variety is invaluable.
The purpose of sharing information is sometimes thought to be about spreading facts because the information itself is meaningful. While that may be true, another, more base-level motivation is to inspire thought. The information isn’t only what matters — it’s also how people consider that information and think critically about it. In a world of AI, that’s a skill even the most powerful of algorithms can’t seem to master. If life were a competition in knowing the most information, the internet would win by a landslide. Fortunately, it’s not, so thinking critically becomes even more essential with the sheer volume of contradicting information available.
Critical thinking is a keyword in English class. Books we read, essays we write and judgments we form all contribute to diversity in perspectives and interpretations.
Less obviously, critical thinking is also a skill in math. When math gets complicated, it’s not just memorizing and applying a procedure indiscriminately — it’s also making judgments about when to do what.
Sometimes, however, we fall into the trap of confining ourselves to the same few topics we think we ‘know.’ As such, when new information appears, we often try to analyze while restricting ourselves to our predetermined worldview, upholding the misleading ethos that only some knowledge is valuable. That, however, is detrimental to our acknowledgement of other claims: we blind ourselves to information that supports those opinions simply because we are glued to our own.
In English, we might ignore other interpretations of text when we fixate on only one. In math, we might miss another way to solve a problem. Those different ways are like different perspectives: though we may prefer some — I like factoring much more than the quadratic formula — we should still understand how others are derived.
Similarly, as a speech and debater, I often encounter topics that I either know nothing about, like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or do not agree with. In debate, I always have to defend both sides, so I use available information, venturing dozens of pages into Google’s search results, to draw evidence for both perspectives. I research both, look for the validity of both and argue for both.
Therefore, in life, although we need not always agree with all sides, we should still respectfully communicate with other viewpoints. As news sources face cuts and limited operation, the silver lining is that alternative sources of information can now expand, and opinions with the most reasonable explanations can bubble to the top. That natural selection of ideas through critical thinking will truly allow us to understand that all knowledge can be power.
