Maybe it’s because I’m a person now and not a newspaper editor that I’m bothered by the blackout in almost all mainstream U.S. media of the cartoons that have incited much of the Muslim world.
Images often provoke controversy more than words do.
When I was a newspaper editor, I probably spent the equivalent of six months of my life debating whether to publish one or another controversial photograph, political cartoon or comic strip. The photograph of a dead American soldier being dragged through the streets of Somalia. The photo of Richard Allen Davis, Polly Klaas’ killer, making an obscene courtroom gesture. A “Doonesbury” comic strip in which a TV commentator tours Ronald Reagan’s brain, pointing out deficiencies. The (San Jose) Mercury News published the first two on my watch. I can’t remember what we decided on the Doonesbury strip, proving that what seem like tough decisions mercifully do not always follow you into eternity.
But even the sensitivity and directness of images doesn’t explain the reluctance to publish the cartoons. I don’t know about you, but I need to better understand Islam, and I especially need to understand why these cartoons strike so deeply into the psyche of Islam. Mind you, this is no flash-in-the-pan incident.
As The New York Times reported,
“The Muslim world erupted in anger…over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Europe… Streets in the Palestinian regions and in Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia were filled with demonstrators calling for boycotts of European goods and burning the flag of Denmark, where the cartoons first appeared.”Protesters torched the Danish consulate in Beirut and the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus.
But the editors of the largest newspapers in the United States and most network broadcasters refused to run even one of the cartoons for fear of offending readers and viewers. (A CNN anchor said the network is “pixillating” the images. I suppose that means “making them incomprehensible,” because that’s how I felt about the CNN image of one of the cartoons.) How about fear of confusing readers and viewers who don’t understand the deep feelings of the protesters? The Associated Press, the primary source for most American newspapers and networks, won’t even transmit the cartoons so that editors can make up their own minds.
I get it that many Muslims believe that no image of the prophet Muhammad should appear. I am grateful for the Times’ word descriptions of the drawings and understand why the drawings would be provocative: “One cartoon depicts Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb. Another shows him at the gates of heaven, arms raised, saying to men who seem to be suicide bombers, ‘Stop, stop, we have run out of virgins.’ A third has devil’s horns emerging from his turban. A fourth shows two women who are entirely veiled, with only their eyes showing, and the prophet standing between them with a strip of black cloth covering his eyes, preventing him from seeing.”
But I can’t truly understand the controversy until I see the cartoons.
I did appreciate the Mercury News publishing on Friday, inside the A-section, a picture of a German newspaper with one of the offending cartoons (which was reproduced at less than 1-1/2 by 1-1/2 inches.)
Not everyone agreed.
The Mercury News on Saturday apologized to readers who were offended but noted rightly that the images “are so much a part of this ongoing story.” I’d like to see more of the 12 cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper in September, then elsewhere in Europe.
No, I wouldn’t run the cartoons “to show support” for the Danish paper, which the BBC says was the motivation for many European newspapers. I’d run them because they’re big news and help explain a religion that we desperately need to understand.
No, I don’t think that American editors have conspired to keep the cartoons out of the paper. Cranky editors tend to oppose most anything that suggests a united front.
The big problem is that talking to readers and viewers is not an automatic instinct for journalists. If it were, the problem would be resolved because:
- Editors would publish a front-page warning saying that several of the cartoons were running inside (at a size that didn’t challenge my weakening eyes).
- Editors would explain why they made the decision to publish. Some might even want to say that it was a tough decision, but I wouldn’t. I’d simply say that it’s important for us to understand why the cartoons push a hot button, and you can’t understand that without seeing them.
- I’d post them online or link to them (which very few newspapers have done) with the same warning and explanation.
- If I were a broadcaster, I’d do the same thing: Warn, explain, then run the images (without “pixillation”).
I would have learned even more if several of the cartoons had accompanied her column.
Why didn’t they?
The Wall Street Journal, like so many others, refuses to publish them.
Jerry Ceppos is a former executive editor of the Mercury News and former vice president/news of Knight Ridder, its parent company.
