Posted on 02/04/2006 10:46:39 PM PST by SmithL
Last week the editorial page received hundreds of letters and e-mails suggesting that The Post's opinion pages had crossed a line, not once but twice. The criticism echoed, in a very faint way, a controversy raging through Europe and the Muslim world. Three distinct stories -- but together they offer a chance to say something about how we view the role and responsibility of opinion pages.
The European affair began Sept. 30, when a Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Muslims view any picture of Islam's founder as blasphemous, and these were particularly insulting; one showed him with a bomb in his headdress.
Muslim protests simmered through the fall, gaining strength in recent weeks with boycotts of Danish products and demands that Denmark's prime minister apologize. To show solidarity with the Danish paper, newspapers in many European countries last week reprinted the cartoons. Protests in several Muslim countries in turn gained strength, in some cases with violence threatened against Europeans and their embassies.
What to make of this? Muslims (and anyone else) are well within their rights to protest the publication of the cartoons if they are offended. They show a basic misunderstanding, though, when they demand apologies from leaders of Denmark or other European countries. In many Muslim-majority countries (Egypt and Syria, for example), officials do control most of the press and so are accountable for the ugly anti-Semitism that often appears in their newspapers. In Denmark, as here, the government cannot tell newspapers what to print or what not to print. We are free to be offensive.
But that leads to an important distinction: The freedom to offend brings with it a responsibility not to offend gratuitously.
That is the line that we at The Post were said to have crossed last week.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
In an era when the Web allows readers to read only commentary that they agree with...
Snort.
Nice try though.
BTW, published those Danish cartoons yet?
But nobody threatened to cut Toles' head off. The point the Post doesn't understand is that the Islamics oppose every political advance we have made in the West in the last 500 years.
And the neurotic reponse of the Muslims illustrates that Americans are neither wrong, nor racist, when they hazzard to suggest that there are too many Muslims in the world who wish to do non-Muslims harm, something I believe, the cartoons signified, especially with the cartoon that depicted a cartoonist at work on a cartoon he knew would address that truth.
But you write: world politics seems to edge closer everyday to the use of WMDs. Debate need to be carried on with seriousness, fairness, and a decent respect for others, not with crayons.
When the culture of the offended in this case nurtures them on hate and when their radios are playing the number one song, "I hate Israel" as their kin are flying missiles into skyscrapers, I hazzard we forego conversation altogether, as experience has shown that the other side is not encumbered with Hamlet's dilemma: rightly to be great is not to fight without great debate.
A cartoon illustrates what has already been spoken. In the case of the amputee, our troops are portrayed as victims, and illustrates how the media "supports our troops". The Wapo's response or lack thereof suggests that it would be pointless to tell them that there is a 2x4 in both of their eyes, even as they tell Americans not to hate.
Geeze I thought Washington's quaint alternative newspaper was announcing the firing of treasonous Tommy Toles.
Oh well the WP's circulation will just continue to drop.
They are different from you, they are better than me. We are lucky they deign to soil their hands with the task of telling us what to think. We should be grateful and shut up.
We should take a second look at their protected Constitutional status. They are not doing their duty to report facts without bias; rather, they are using that protection to become an unelected 'branch' of government.
I worked in a television newsroom for years and found the photographers to be the best journalists. They essentially let the sound and pictures tell the story. It was only when some producer or editor got his or her hands on the report that it would turn from truth to something else entirely.
Good post, Mad Dawg.
More like an era in which we can avoid having leftist opinions jammed down our throats.
Thanks for the belly laugh!
(Thanks for nice words.)
Check out this cowardly weasel "Crowell" who is making the rounds on TV now.
Ex-Klintonista CIA leftie.
He says "The US Constitution created the '4th Estate' - 'The Press' to keep a balancing check on the Administration, Congress, and the Judiciary".
What a crock!
Crowell is claiming the media is immune and above any laws that even hold the President subject to federal statutes.
Crowell is asserting that journalists are some kind of "holier than thou philosopher-*queens" *(75% at the NYT) - the self-annointed czars of filtering and censoring in their daily "budget meetings" (FR newsies can explain these) what the peons out there are to read/hear/see as "their truth".
By Crowell's logic I can use the 2nd Amendment to "monitor and control" the media - yet remain aloof and immune from any responsibilities or repercussions whatsoever.
Who does Crowell now work for?
The MSM.......
The brave "Muslims just say Boo and I'll shut up" media!
The European media - mostly lefties - is laughing at the 99.999% liberal American press now.
Any liberal journalists can register at FR and refute this - But caution - I will then name the names of those in the press and how and where and when I got my information.
That should really enhance your resumes and careers.
Maybe I'll start with a quiet dinner in a Manhattan apartment with a number of NYT employees -
Can I come?? Please, please, and Joe Cool with his trusty little cellphone that takes pictures??
Fish wrap is right on.
That dinner already took place
Salmon was served
I can't understand what the Washington comPost is saying...their flatulence is so loud and noxious that it distorts all of their meaning.
Well, I guess I'll just have to settle for my Texas pinto beans and pork spare ribs!
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