Daily Press publishes Mohammed cartoon
Daily Press editor Don Holland’s decision to run the Danish cartoon showing the prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban has raised some eyebrows in the media, both regionally and nationally.
The mindless violence by Islamic radicals is par for the course. But what is incredible is that the Associated Press, which distributes news stories and photos from across the globe, has decided that you shouldn’t see it.
The Daily Press is one of the very few American newspapers that is publishing the cartoon. The point is not whether it is offensive or not. The point is that it is part of a worldwide news story.
The fact that radical Muslims are going berserk over a cartoon says more about their mindset than it does about a cartoon.
AP’s Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll says AP won’t “distribute content that is known to be offensive, with rare exceptions.”
What is offensive is that AP fancies itself to be the guardian of good taste for thousands of American newspapers rather than letting individual newspapers make that decision.
AP’s philosophy also strikes at the heart of a free press and the elementary principles of libertarian thought — that individuals have the God-given right to read what they please and decide for themselves what is and isn’t offensive.
AP has distributed countless controversial images, presumably without intending offense. But some could argue that the historic image of the Saigon police chief executing a Viet Cong spy was offensive. Years ago, the Daily Press received numerous calls when we published a photo of victims of the Rawandan genocide. Certainly that was a newsworthy, albeit disturbing, image.
To be fair, I’m not surprised that Don ran the cartoon. I’m mostly surprised that so few other newspapers have.
The old guard media-on-the-media publication, Editor & Publisher, specifically mentioned the Daily Press as one of four American papers listed to run the cartoon:
* A California paper, the Daily Press in Victorville, became one of the few to publish a Muhammad cartoon–the one with the prophet with a bomb in his turban–today, with its editor in a column knocking The Associated Press for refusing to distribute the images. Another small paper in Cheyenne, Wyoming, also published two of the cartoons, and also complained about the AP stance.
* Eric Mink, commentary editor at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, explains in a column today: “If a government controls what can and cannot be distributed, it’s called censorship. If a media outlet decides for itself what to include and exclude from its products — whether for journalistic or economic reasons, out of respect for possible sensitivities of some readers or concern about possible impact on its community — it’s called editorial judgment.
“Here in the United States, at least two major newspapers in the last week — the Austin American-Statesman and The Philadelphia Inquirer — chose to publish one of the original Danish cartoons to illustrate stories about the controversy and violence. Other papers, including the Post-Dispatch, have decided that the images aren’t necessary to communicate the story. It’s called judgment.”
The truth is, it’s not a particularly good cartoon. It’s only designed to upset Muslims, which it did. The Danish newspaper, which apparently has a history of these sorts of stunts, isn’t particularly heroic. If they were a poster on an Internet message board, they’d be considered a troll.
But the response to the cartoon is news. And to dance all around the thing that triggered the response is counter-intuitive and, in my opinion, shirking journalistic responsibility. As Don mentions in his editorial, this isn’t the first offensive image to run in a newspaper, because of its real or perceived news value. It likely won’t be the last. I think we will be poorer as a nation if our journalists refuse to cover news that makes them uncomfortable, even when it’s inarguably a real news story.
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