Should the media ever be censored?
I can describe what censorship is and explain its positives and negatives.
Should the media ever be censored?
I can describe what censorship is and explain its positives and negatives.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- Sometimes media is censored due to potentially causing offence, sensitive content, or harmful content.
- Inconvenience censorship also happens where certain information might need to be restricted.
- Censorship can also happen to support democracy and uphold democratic values.
- There are global differences in censorship, for example, China has very strict censorship.
Keywords
Censorship - the control of information or ideas within a society
Media - television, radio, printed and new media which can reach a large number of people
Inconvenient - causing difficulty, trouble, or discomfort, often by disrupting plans or making things less easy
Common misconception
Censorship is always bad (this might be linked to students' understanding of free press and human rights).
Censorship sometimes needs to happen to reduce offence, upset and harm.
To help you plan your year 10 citizenship lesson on: Should the media ever be censored?, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 10 citizenship lesson on: Should the media ever be censored?, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 citizenship lessons from the How does the media hold those in power to account? unit, dive into the full secondary citizenship curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
Content guidance
- Depiction or discussion of sensitive content
- Depiction or discussion of sexual violence
- Depiction or discussion of serious crime
Supervision
Adult supervision required
Licence
Lesson video
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