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The Big Question of the Jyllands-Posten Editor: If You Had to Do It All Over Again, Would You Have Printed the Mohammed Cartoons? Answer: “Hard to Tell!"

The deputy editor-in-chief of Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper at the center of the controversy in the printing of the Mohammed cartoons last September, peered out from the stage gazing onto hundreds of fellow editors from around the world and asked himself the question he knew they wanted to ask: “Would you do it over again?”
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And like everything about this issue there was no straight answer. “Hard to tell,” he said. Although he then confessed that if they had known then of the street attacks and loss of life that would follow then probably not.

But again he reemphasized the newspaper has never apologized for printing the newspaper, but rather apologized only if those printed cartoons caused any distress.

Jörgen Mikkelsen and culture editor Fleming Rose were in Moscow as part of a World Editors Forum discussion to discuss how freedom of expression can live side-by-side with religious values. Their appearance at the Forum was kept secret for security reasons.

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Major World Journalist Organizations Reject Government-imposed or Suggested Codes of Conduct, Guidelines, or Even New Laws Restricting Freedom of the Press In Response To The Danish Cartoons, But They Agree That Journalists Should Not Create Unnecessary Tension By Promoting Hatred Or Inciting Violence
Major news organizations including the International Federation of Jounalists (IFJ) and several all-news channels have held separate meetings in the past days to discuss the Danish cartoon controversy and to determine what has been learned and what needs to be done to prevent similar distress in the future.

Why Is It So Difficult For The Media Just To Say “Sorry”?
A Danish reader took ftm to task this past week for saying that Jyllands-Posten had apologized for printing the 12 cartoons that caused riots throughout the world by protesting Muslims. There was no apology for printing the cartoons, we were told, but rather the apology was if the cartoons caused any offense.

Is There A Difference If Newspapers Did Not Print Those Danish Cartoons But Did Publish Them On Their Web Sites Or Provided Links Outside Their Country To Where They Could Be Viewed?
US media, with just a few exceptions, did not show the Danish cartoons exercising their freedom of the press responsibility, but a Google image search found the most offensive of those cartoons on the San Francisco Chronicle web site, but not in the newspaper. In the UK not one newspaper printed the cartoons but that didn’t stop some national newspapers from offering direct links to sites outside the country where the cartoons could be viewed.

With Danish Embassies Burning, Danish Goods Taken Off Store Shelves – Some European-Owned -- Were European Newspaper’s Acting Responsibly In Reprinting Those Jyllands-Posten Cartoons? Or Are Those Fires and Boycotts The Price Democracy Pays For Freedom of the Press?
When European newspapers reprinted those 12 Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad there is no question they had the freedom of the press to do so, but was it responsible journalism to offend Muslims in such a way? And in making that decision does one take into account the rioting, the burnings, the boycotts the world over? In other words should “fear” of what might happen preclude publication?

Why Did A German Newspaper Immediately Apologize For Placing An Ad About Gas Within A Story About Auschwitz? Why Did the Rome Football Club Accept Tough Punishment For Its Fans’ Display of Fascist Banners and Swastikas? And Why Did It Take Jyllands-Posten Four Months to Say Sorry for Printing Caricatures of Prophet Muhammad?
We in the West take for granted our freedom of speech and the press. We also understand that with those rights comes a social responsibility and the media, and the public, constantly question just where the line is drawn on what is acceptable. How three separate incidents were handled this past week in Europe shows how far we have come, and how far we have yet to go.

Unfortunately, it was somewhat of a lost opportunity. The idea had been to have the two Danes and five others have a joint discussion about the issue and then open it up to the floor. The Danes had no friends on that stage and if they had any in the huge auditorium they kept to themselves!

Mikkelsen got to go first and made his various points but then all the other panelists were given too much time to make statements – nothing really much new in what they had to say – and by the time they were done there wasn’t really enough time for questions from the floor or interaction between the panelists.

Still Mikkelsen, who looked very drawn and tired, wanted to clear up a few points that obviously he has had to deal with over the past months. No, Jyllands-Posten is not owned by the Danish government, it is a non-socialist Liberal newspaper that has no government ties. No, neither he nor his editors had any cynical mean obsession to upset Muslims around the world, or, for that matter, Muslims just in Denmark. No, there was no intent to hurt the individual members of Islam, and no, there still will be no apology for printing the cartoons and for the real skeptics, no, there was no increase in the newspaper’s circulation because of the furor.

There was a distinguished panel from around the world that gave mostly long-winded views that we all knew already giving forth their views and while everything was mostly polite it seemed there had been very little movement in any particular camp.

Perhaps the most interesting and honest comment came from Eric Le Boucher, co-editor of Le Monde, who explained why his newspaper did not print the cartoons. “Let’s be honest about this,” he told the forum. “We have a correspondent in the Middle East and we didn’t want to get him in trouble.”Le Monde had editorialized condemning the comparison between terrorists and Mohammed.

The 12 cartoons, one of them showing Mohammed wearing a turban with a bomb and a burning fuse, outraged Muslims around the world. The 12 cartoonists are still under police protection and still continue to receive threats, Mikkelsen said.

Perhaps the most sobering account of how a local issue can affect lives around the world came from Hakeem Bello, executive editor of the National Interest in Nigeria. "Not a single newspaper in Nigeria published these cartoons, but we suffered the heaviest death toll of 160 civilians in the violence ignited by these caricatures," he said.

Imtiaz Alam, general secretary of the South Asian Free Media Association in Pakistan told the Jyllands-Posten editors, "Your cartoons were a form of hate speech.”

Akbar Ganji, the Iranian journalist awarded the World Association of Newspapers’ Golden Pen of Freedom award Monday after serving a six-year prison term in Iran, told the Danes, “From a moral point of view, you have the freedom to raise your hand for any reason, but you should not break my nose in so doing. And from a political point of view, don't you think there's enough conflict between civilizations already," he asked?

At the end of the day, nothing had changed but it’s probably a given that there aren’t going to be cartoons printed around the world these days that compare Mohammed to a terrorist. That message is well-received, no matter how much the Danish editors might hedge their bets.

 


ftm Follow Up & Comments

The Danish Cartoon Story Does Not Go Away - March 26, 2007

Flemming Rose, the culture editor at Jyllands-Posten who made the decision to print the 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammad that so upset the  Muslim world,  is to receive the inaugural Sappho prize given by the Free Press Society for combining “excellence in his work with courage and a refusal to compromise.”

And in Paris, a court has ruled that the editor of the magazine Charlie Hebdo was not guilty of insulting Muslims after the magazine had printed the cartoons last year.

Referring to the one cartoon that seemed to upset people the most – the one representing the prophet Mohammad wearing a turban with a bomb in it --  the court said, “The drawing, taken on its own, could be interpreted as shocking for followers of this religion. However, it had to be seen in the wider context of the magazine examining the issue of religious fundamentalism. Therefore, even if the cartoon is shocking or hurtful to Muslims, there was no deliberate intention to offend them.”

The French prosecutor had refused to bring a case against the magazine and the action was brought by two French Muslim organizations, one of whom says it will appeal.  That will take another year to reach court.

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