Civil Liberties | Censorship of Violence in Popular Entertainment Is Not Justified

About the author: Judith Levine is a journalist, essayist, and the coauthor of Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex. The following viewpoint is excerpted from Shooting the Messenger: Why Censorship Won’t Stop Violence, a report that Levine prepared for the Media Coalition, a free speech advocacy group.

In May 1999, shortly after the Littleton, Colorado, murders, a North Carolina high-school student typed the words “The end is near” on a computer screen as a joke about millennial madness. Another student saw the message, called it a threat,...

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