an excerpt from a study on media literacy and censorship national telecommunications and information administration, us department of commerce
1 from the early days of radio and movies to the vast resources of today’s world wide web, the mass media have been an object of fascination for youth. yet parents, educators, and youth advocates have long been uneasy about many of the media messages that children and teenagers encounter. popular culture can glamorize violence, irresponsible actions, junk food, drugs, and alcohol; it can reinforce stereotypes; it can prescribe the lifestyle to which one should aspire, and the products one must buy to attain it.
2 thus, it isn’t surprising that calls to censor the mass media in the interest of protecting youth have been a mainstay of american politics for many years. attempts to censor gangster movies in the 1930s, crime comics in the 1950s, and tv violence today have produced an almost unending series of laws, regulations, and proposals for restricting the art, information, and entertainment available to youth. the advent of the internet as a medium in which young people are often better versed than their elders has only intensified these concerns.
3 there are many reasons why overarching censorship is an unsatisfactory response to concerns about the mass media and its effects on youth. foremost is the first amendment, which protects our ability to read, watch, listen, access ideas, and think about them. this first amendment protection is not simply a legal technicality to be overcome if possible by laws or policies cleverly crafted to avoid constitutional pitfalls. the right to explore art and ideas is basic to a free society. without it, adolescents cannot grow into the thoughtful, educated citizens who are essential to a functioning democracy.
4 some people point to "violence in the media," "extreme violence," or "gratuitous violence" as inappropriate and harmful to children. but these are elastic and subjective concepts. and most of those who think that "media violence" is bad for young adults acknowledge that they don’t mean to include televised versions of shakespeare, sophocles, or saving private ryan.
5 context counts for everything in art and entertainment: how is the violence presented; what are the consequences; what are the ambiguities in the story? there is no way that a censorship law or a simplistic letter-or-number rating system can make these judgments. as media scholars have observed, because different youngsters react very differently to the mythology, symbols, and stories in popular entertainment, "universalizing claims are fundamentally inadequate in accounting for media’s social and cultural impact."
which is the most logical place in the essay for the following sentence?
it is difficult for people to agree on what should be censored, and to define it in terms that are clear enough to put publishers and distributors on notice of what is banned.
a) at the beginning of paragraph 1
b) at the end of paragraph 2
c) at the beginning of paragraph 4
d) at the end of paragraph 4