Censorship

Censorship is where a media piece has to be aware of the content they put in their productions as it could be unsuitable for certain audiences. This is done to protect the viewer or listener, as media has been said to influence and affect the way young people think and behave. Censorship can be carried out in many ways, it can be a tv ad that is only allowed to be broadcast after a certain hour, or a music track that has explicit language bleeped out on the radio. Many media productions have caused outrage and severe complaints by viewers, and production companies have found that they can be criticized for applying censorship both too much and not enough.

Some examples of songs which are often noticed most on the radio for having censored and certain words bleeped out are as follows :

Cee-lo Green - Fuck you / Forget you
Akon - I wanna fuck you / Love you
Bruno Mars - So fucking bad / So frikking bad

There have also been music videos that have been censored or certificated due to unsuitable themes and content.

Ciara - Ride
Banned from all television due to overly sexual content by the artist. In an interview she claimed she's glad it can still be viewed by fans online and admits it is a very "sensual video".

Also, Rihannas recent video "s&m" was banned from daytime tv and entirely in some countries for including sexual imagery and scenes which were not 'kid friendly'. It has been suggested that some artists take this approach specifically to get that form of attention and to make people want to try and watch it even more.