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 offensives, 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: would 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.
Greg Neiman is a retired Advocate editor. Follow his blog at readersadvocate.blogspot.ca or email greg.neiman.blog@gmail.com.