Posted on 02/08/2006 12:27:33 AM PST by BCrago66
The editorial staff of the alternative weekly New York Press walked out today, en masse, after the paper's publishers backed down from printing the Danish cartoons that have become the center of a global free-speech fight.
Editor-in-Chief Harry Siegel emails, on behalf of the editorial staff:
New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.
We have no desire to be free speech martyrs, but it would have been nakedly hypocritical to avoid the same cartoons we'd criticized others for not running, cartoons that however absurdly have inspired arson, kidnapping and murder and forced cartoonists in at least two continents to go into hiding. Editors have already been forced to leave papers in Jordan and France for having run these cartoons. We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.
This was not an easy decision. I've been reading the Press since 1988 and have dreamed of running it for nearly as long. The paper's editorial staff has worked impossibly hard hours and has come quite a ways in only a few months towards restoring the paper's tarnished editorial reputation and credibility. I'm proud of the work we've done, and wish we'd had time to finish the job. I wish the Press all the best, and hope that under new ownership and leadership it can again be an invaluable read for all good Gothamites.
Someone should make a cartoon page of several of the muslim cartoons depicting Jews and other infidels. Publish it on every front page in America!
Yep - it was our very own Man of Straw - poking the governments nose into the freedom of the press.
Oh well....
can you rearrange these word to get a well known phrase or saying:
Straw Jack stuff
answers on the back of a postcard please.
But now that THEY would be the target of reprisals, it's a whole different story, isn't it?
Not only are they hypocrites, they are cowards.
I was reading about all this crap in the new Time magazine, and I realized that if it were not for the internet, I wouldn't even know what the cartoons looked like.
None of the newspapers or major news companies will print them.
Iranian agents spreading the hate and using riots to harrass the American and allied nations forces there, not to mention the democratic governments of those countries.
Guess I am in the minority here, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.
Freedom of the press means freedom to refrain from printing, too. If I were running a publication I would not make my aim to print things that p!ss people off only to demonstrate how free I am to do so. There are ways to maintain principles, make reasonable arguments, and keep the public interest without reverting to sensational exhibitions.
That said, the American media has not endeared itself to me either. You're right about "phony wussies."
The press has painted themselves into a corner. When the next controversy against Christians comes along, they are now on the record saying that insulting someone's religion is no longer acceptable. Mocking Christians will be harder to do while hiding their new double standard.
If it would have been a picture of president Bush with a bomb sticking out of his cowboy hat, then it would have been on the first page, over and over again for a month.
You have to stay in Britain and work for change!
NY PRESS OPUS
http://51.nypress.com/blog.cfm?blog_id=454
*These papers only have the guts to slam Republicans and not much else.*
They have no problem slaming Christians, too. They call it "courage." They are cowards and liars.
Liberals are cowards. They will continue to insult and mock until they hit steel. Then, like the cowards they are, will "cut and run".
Bears repeating. Thanks.
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