More on the Cowardice of American Media

Jonah Goldberg makes a compelling point. I plan to call the Virginian Pilot to find out where their pictures are.


I'm basically with JPod, but I'd go further. The newspapers are claiming they won't run these cartoons out of sensitivity etc. But that argument only works -- or only works well -- when the discussion is about running them as editorial cartoons. They aren't cartoons anymore, they are news. The debate keeps focusing on whether newspapers should run them based upon some sort of lofty "editorial" judgment -- i.e. coming out in favor of freedom of speech or in solidarity with the Danes. That's an argument, but a fairly irrelevant one.

The better way to look at this is by asking a basic question: where the heck are the news editors? When Neo-Nazis desecrate synagogues or black churches, newspapers and networks show the images even though they are just as easily described with words. Why? Because of their news value. Surely, the swastika drawn on a Jewish grave is "offensive." The Abu Ghraib photos were offensive, the Rodney King photos were offensive, lots of photos are offensive. But sometimes they provide context. And, sometimes editors proudly run them because they are offensive. That was surely why the Rodney King video played ten trillion times. The Abu Ghraib images were broadcast constantly partly on the grounds that people needed to be "shocked."
Now, in the case of these cartoons, there's news value in showing people how decidedly un-shocking they are. That's important context and the news and photo editors are simply abdicating their responsibilities.

UPDATE:

I have no problem whatever with a media organization choosing not to publish the cartoons on the grounds that it is acting cautiously to ensure that its staffers don't get their heads bashed in overseas -- or because of fears that Islamic radicals here at home might choose to take a stand by taking a shot at somebody. These people are dangerous and it is meet and proper to exercise caution.

A consortium of publishers in the United States joined together to put Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses into paperback in order to protect staffers at Rushdie's publishing house from being added to the murderous fatwa against him -- and only the most self-righteously pious could have objected to that act of caution, given the circumstances.

It's the pretense in the cartoon case that I find so repulsive -- the pretense that these organizations have made an editorial judgment in choosing not to publish. That's nonsense on stilts, and what's more, they all know it. They aren't publishing out of a reasonable fear, not out of reasoned reflection. But they just can't resist lying in a way to make themselves feel better about their decision.

[AND MORE]

Papers not publishing those cartoons don't annoy me as much as ones who don't publish them while publishing dunged Marys.

[AND MORE]

COVERING A CONTROVERSY ABOUT MOHAMMED, THE NEW YORK TIMES RUNS... VIRGIN MARY IN ELEPHANT DUNG
So - the New York Times writes about the Danish cartoon controversy, and includes a photo of demonstrators... and one other photo. The caption:
Chris Ofili's "Holy Virgin Mary" was at the center of controversy when shown at the Brooklyn Museum in 1999.
Yup, it's the Virgin Mary depicted in elephant dung painting.
What a bunch of wimps. They'll run photos of art that offends Christians from seven years ago in a heartbeat, but they won't dare run a cartoon that could offend their Muslim readers.