I haven't been there often, but in this
business, sooner or later you are going to offend someone.
Fortunately, the consequences are most
often a blow to the ego (a metaphorical punch-back in the nose) or
financial (repent publicly, or pay a fine).
People may get angry at perceived
offences, but they don't storm the newsroom with assault rifles.
Just the same, the doorway to the newsroom where I contribute is
numeric-coded. Can't be too careful.
Like the editors of all Canada's
newspapers, I've been mulling the question of whether we should all
just publish the cartoons of Muhammed that led to fundamentalist
cowards murdering staff at French satirical magazine Charlie
Hebdo.
My first reaction was that, well, we'll
show them. If everyone in the publishing business was in solidarity
with the publication, that “We Are Charlie”, we should blast
those cartoons all over the world.
But what, exactly, would we be proving?
That we are all capable of gratuitous religious insult? That we will
all provoke anger, just because we can?
CBC News, in its public debate on the
issue proved that the network can provoke gratuitous anger, no matter
what it does. Even Canadian MPs and senators managed to weigh in on
both sides.
Employment minister Jason Kenney —
probably with the help of the spinsters on his staff — discovered
that CBC had reproduced an image of a crucifix in a jar of urine, and
rightly asked why the CBC was content to gratuitously insult
Christians, but would not do the same for Muslims.
Good question. The answer probably
includes consideration of credible death threats. My question in
return would be: does Kenney's right to decide to give insult
include personal responsibility for the deaths of his staff?
Does that mean the terrorists have won?
We'll see. The battle rages on.
Among English newspapers in Canada,
only the National Post in Canada republished a cartoon
depiction that Muslims would consider blasphemous. Eleven French
publications in Quebec decided that “nous sommes tous Charlie”
and reprinted a Charlie Hebdo cover showing Muhammed.
I'm not sure that we are all Charlie.
When the publication began in 1960, its slogan was “dumb and
nasty.” I hope you don't believe that describes you.
We have quite enough of that in the
digital age. A wide number of newspapers are considering, or have
already decided to disable the comments capabilities of their online
news feeds.
Our concepts surrounding free speech
did not inspire higher debate on the issues covered in our
information universe. Rather, they just opened the door to “dumb
and nasty.”
For many major publications, monitoring
the conversations in the comments section of online stories and
opinion pieces simply became pointlessly onerous. It's not a job I
would want. Who would want to rule the kingdom of the trolls? The
biggest troll?
That has been part of my consideration
in the question of whether we should reprint cartoons deemed so
offensive they inspire murder.
What were these cartoons anyway? I
didn't look too hard to find them (I'm sure they are widely
available). But one I did see (dated from 2006) was a depiction of a
distraught Muhammed weeping. The caption in the thought balloon
translates: “It's hard to be loved by fundamentalists.”
Would that I could see a depiction of
Jesus doing the same. It would likely become part of the collection
of wallpaper images on my computer.
In Islam, to produce a graven image of
the prophet is blasphemy. Some say the punishment for such an insult
is death.
But is it not blasphemous to put
yourself in God's place, and deliver the punishment yourself? To
murder people to avenge blasphemy is blasphemy itself, right?
That's what the We Are Charlie people
should be saying. At that point, I'd join them.
Everyone knows there's a line between
satire and insult. A good satirist dances on that line and sometimes
oversteps.
But don't try to convince me that it
takes a troll to defend freedom or to express any love for democracy.
That these trolls can operate in this particular democracy is gratis
of freedom, not the other way round.
Follow Greg Neiman's blog at
Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca
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