Your Danish Cartoons Hangover Update

There's really only one story this time out, but it's a doozy: the Danish daily Politiken has issued an apology for the reprinting of the Kurt Westergaard bomb-in-turban cartoon in 2008 after assassination plots were revealed against the elderly cartoonist. This is in response to a lawsuit brought about on behalf of several Muslim organizations against the papers that did this. As one might expect, the paper has been savaged by critical remarks, despite unconvincingly trying to play it as an apology against the offense caused by publishing but not a step away from the right to publish. Those who insist on seeing some sort of creeping capitulation to Muslim culture in all thing Danish Cartoons just got the benefits of drinking eight energy drinks.

One problem to my mind is that in general terms the reprinting in 2008 wasn't initially portrayed as the newspapers in question trying to fulfill their informational mandate but as a show of political support for Westergaard. I think the former impulse worth defending to the death and the latter kind of silly, frankly, and not worth the offense it clearly causes. If reporting on Westergaard meant re-publishing the cartoon, so be it. But by their own publicly-expressed formulation, that's not what they were doing. I wish all newspapers including the original publishers of the Danish Cartoons would just be newspapers devoted to disseminating vital and necessary information rather than aspiring to be actors in an episode of grand political theatre -- there have been plenty of opportunities to exercise our passion for the necessity of free speech on behalf of journalistic mission, including several news organizations failing to do so when they should have stepped up in 2006, that it's hard for me to get as excited about arguing it on behalf of a stunt, particularly when arguing those cases seems to be more about wishing there were no repercussions as opposed to their being worth it.

I realize there are many that disagree with me on this.
 
posted 11:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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