Muslim cartoons highlight the need for ethical publishing
Dave Weatherall Canadian University Press
TORONTO (CUP) — The freedom of the press is one that all journalists should hold dear to their hearts and notebooks: it is a vital part of any working democracy and should be defended in the event of a realistic threat to its survival.
Case in point: the recent illustrations published in Danish newspapers. The justification for publishing them delivered by the newspaper in question was that it was their democratic right to do so. I have not been able to read anywhere that anyone actually agreed with the depictions of the Prophet Mohammed, or why anyone in the office actually thought they were important enough to warrant communicating the message to the Danish population and, subsequently, the world.
The Danish editors’ assumption that Muslims living in countries that have not undergone the democratic upheavals long past in most Western countries will immediately embrace one of the underlying principles associated with a free democracy is, needless to say, a gross oversight.
Additionally, failing to consider the consequence of angering some of the over a billion Muslims worldwide with a depiction of their Prophet wearing a bomb for a turban, especially given the currently unstable state of geopolitics, should be grounds for severe disciplinary action, or at least a solid sensitivity-training session for the paper’s entire staff.
It’s also a cowardly act: Muslims are an easy target in Denmark; their numbers are relatively low and adding fuel to a fire that has been burning for some time is not an exercise in freedom of the press, but an act of arrogance that reeks of Euro-centrism and a “we can do it, so why shouldn’t we?” attitude that is hardly conducive to healthy political, economic or social relationships between cultures. At the very least, it strikes of a lack of understanding as to why freedom of expression exists and, at the worst, of gross intolerance and hate speech.
Going back to the origins of journalism, when publishing decisions weren’t based on whether the subject covered was a particularly litigious celebrity of corporate entity with an inexhaustible legal fund, the true value of freedom of expression becomes clear: to serve the public good while minimizing harm, not to flood the information superhighway with regressive material designed to incite because it’s a newspaper’s self-appointed right to do so.
Freedom of expression does not exist so that ethnic majorities can take pot shots from afar at domestic ethnic minorities with sizeable populations elsewhere, which is what the cartoons essentially amount to.
While the initial act of publishing the cartoons is easily classified as a questionable decision, the reaction from some Muslim communities worldwide has been equally distasteful. For international news agencies, Wearing balaclavas, firing off Ak-47s, played directly into the newspaper stereotypes they were ostensibly protesting. While it does expose the fact that Western television outlets rarely air Muslim stories unless they accompany violent images, that message was probably lost on the majority of viewers.
I’m not alone in this vein of thinking. Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress, told CTV Newsnet “the Prophet Muhammed faced many worse insults than what this cartoonist could offer, and the tradition of Islam and the example of the Prophet Mohammed was to look the other way and not react.”
Countering an unacceptable action with an equally stupid one leads down a dangerous path of one-upmanship with potentially devastating, sadly predictable consequences that are already starting to unfold: French newspapers “in solidarity” with the Danish proponents of freedom of expression have re-published the cartoons, vowing that the freedom of the press will not be curtailed. Surely issue sales had little to do with their decisions, not to mention a deep-seeded national history of not exactly welcoming the integration of Muslims into French society (remember those riots recently? — mostly poor, disenfranchised immigrant youth from predominantly Muslim north African countries).
What will likely follow the defiant European freedom of expression solidarity acts are more gun shows in Muslim streets and the escalation of bomb threats, like the one the Danish newspaper that started it all has received, and for what?
So that a picture of the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb for a turban could be seen by millions?
Freedom of the press entails being free to publish whatever you think should be published, but it also allows editors the freedom not to publish whatever they want — hopefully a lesson the Danish editors will have learned the hard way.
