When my communication ethics students at the University of Denver analyzed the Danish cartoon controversy, an obvious majority of them was ready to decide they wouldn’t reprint the offending images of the Prophet Muhammad. Describe them, maybe, but not reprint them.
Then one of the students finally located the caricatures on the Internet and called them up on her computer. The class gathered around to look. Just that quickly, the near-consensus swung 180 degrees. Publish, they said.
Why the change of heart? Well, they explained, the cartoons weren’t as offensive as they had imagined they were. Lame, perhaps, and not very funny, but hardly anything to get exercised about.
And yet the cartoons have sparked rioting, the torching of embassies and even death throughout the Islamic world. Even more bewildering, the unrest began months after the images were first published and has continued for weeks, seeming to feed on itself, fueled by each new publication of the cartoons.
Ironically, every time there’s a major protest, it’s more likely the cartoons will be published again. The violent reaction makes it difficult for news media in the Western world not to show their audiences what all the fuss is about. It’s news.
That’s the major reason my DU students would publish – at least one cartoon, they said, along with links to websites where the others could be seen.
But the debate continues. Is it freedom of expression? Or is it unnecessary provocation?
Some critics say Western media are trivializing the cause and exaggerating the reaction. There are a billion Muslims; only a few thousand have been making trouble.
And the cartoons are only a recent manifestation of a long history of bullying, humiliation and marginalization of Muslims by Europe and the United States, writes Peter Matthews of the left-leaning Information Clearing House. “… The mainstream media’s handling of this story plays like propaganda aimed at deepening the divide between “Us and Them,”‘ says Matthews.
On the other hand are those who say the manipulation comes from the Islamist side. The cartoons were published in September; nothing happened until some Muslim leaders cynically decided, last month, to use them to provoke cultural differences between Islam and non-believers.
Some say it’s blasphemy even to depict any image of Muhammad, although Islamic scholars disagree about that interpretation. Blasphemy or not, that’s the root of the controversy.
Six months ago, after learning that the author of a children’s book on Muhammad couldn’t find an illustrator who wasn’t afraid of retribution, the conservative Danish daily Jyllands-Posten sponsored a contest soliciting depictions of the prophet.
It was time to stop being cowed by Islamist fundamentalists, the Danes said; time to confront European media’s timid self-censorship. If we don’t, as the saying goes, the terrorists will have won.
Journalists share a trait with adolescents: They enjoy pushing the envelope, testing the limits. Western champions of freedom of speech, wrote Emram Qureshi, a Harvard Law School fellow, in The New York Times, seem to “deriv[e] pleasure from their ability to gratuitously offend Muslims. They view freedom of speech much as Islamic fundamentalists do – simply as the ability to offend … .”
It could be argued that deciding not to publish the cartoons – yet again, when they are readily available on the Internet – is not cowardly self-censorship but considered good judgment. The difference is a matter of degree, and intent. The intent should be to inform, not to offend.
First-world, free-world media rightly reject the restrictions that religious absolutists would have us adopt. Hypocritically, the absolutists don’t show the same tolerance of the West’s different values that we should show toward theirs. But somebody has to be the adult in this tantrum. Better that it should be a responsible free press, thoughtfully balancing its duty to tell the truth against the harm the truth can cause.
Fred Brown, retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a former national president of the Society of Professional Journalists.
