Ombudsman Criticizes Washington Post Decision To Drop Non Sequitor Cartoon That Mentions Muhammed

In a very polite article that nonetheless strongly satisfies the ombudsman's role as a critical voice concerning editorial decisions made by his client, Andrew Alexander fairly crushes the Washington Post's decision not to run a cartoon by Wiley Miller that made a reference to Muhammed in a text part of the cartoon that was satirizing the Danish Cartoons Controversy and all of its subsequent madness.

It's actually no surprise that the Post would join in with several other papers in not running the cartoon -- the Post is almost always on the side of not running something that could conceivably problematic. Two specifically troubling aspects arise, though. The first and foremost can be found several graphs into the story, where Alexander mentions that the Post not only ran the new Miller cartoon on-line and didn't realize they'd done so until informed, they'd actually run a cartoon with a similar verbal reference a few years back. If you think the dialogue around this issue is devolving, there's your Exhibit A. The second is that they decided the cartoon was needlessly provocative as opposed to an expression of an idea that they found troublesome in its execution. This is a line of inquiry I generally applaud because I think it's important, but 1) it seems really, really harshly and poorly applied to this cartoon and that cartoonist, and 2) it seems like it should matter that he didn't depict Muhammad in making his point. The cartoon they ran in 2006 would also fall under this criticism, which means this is a newer way of thinking as well.
 
posted 8:00 am PST | Permalink
 

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