When in doubt, don’t publish
Sad sad sad. Sunny at Liberal Conspiracy – see comment 12:
I buy Jonathan Dimbleby’s arguments:
First, even the editor agreed that printing the images were not central to the story anyway since the Yale Press was central to the story. So it’s not censorship. Printing them would be gratuitous.
Really. The images were not ‘central’ to the story because Yale Press was central to the story. Well what about Yale Press was central to the story? Its pretty blue eyes? Its taste in music? No; its withdrawal of illustrations from a book about a controversy about those illustrations. So in what sense were the illustrations not central to the story? Who decides what’s central? Since when is reporting supposed to stick to what is (by some very narrow definition) ‘central’ while stripping out everything that is (by some insanely broad definition) peripheral? Since when is the subject matter of a controversy not central to reporting on that controversy? How can it be ‘gratuitous’ to print something that is informative about the subject of the story? Would Sunny Hundal take that view of the matter if the subject were a strike or a debate in Parliament or a war? I doubt it, so why does he take it here? I don’t know.
The ultimate ethical tangle, or a simple case of selling out to intimidation? I never ran the images on my old blog because I always thought it was a case of stirring up controversy for its own sake. I also had major doubts about the motives of bloggers and activists who did use them. All in all, Dimbleby has made the right decision, but I can’t help wondering if he made it for the wrong reasons.
That’s it. He doesn’t say what he thinks the motives of those bloggers and activists were – he just throws a little stinkbomb of suspicion and then runs away. Tacky. Tacky tacky tacky.
I always wondered why attention was not more heavily focused on the pig-ignorant mullahs from Denmark who crafted a booklet of the original cartoons, and faked several extra ones eg showing a man with a pig’s head as a purported Mo-toon, then took this booklet on tour to islamic countries to whip up outrage and presumaably funding.
The best tactic against this nonsense would be to focus on those individuals actively inciting violence and murder, and if they can’t be convicted under law then give their reputation the kicking it deserves in the public square.
This isn’t ‘the free world versus the faceless assassins of Islam’ IF the civilised world frames it as ‘pig-ignorant criminal inciters against decent people of all nations.’
Well I certainly did my best to focus more attention on that! But to absolutely no avail.
It really is maddening – because it was the photo of the pig-squealing competition that was really offensive, viewed (incorrectly) as a Danish cartoon of Mo. Without that photo, the death toll and the violence might have been much reduced- it seems very likely that they would have. It was the god damn imams who were responsible for adding that photo – yet still to this day the BBC and pretty much all other mass media always report it as ‘the cartoons caused riots and deaths’ – the cartoons get all the blame and the really resonsible parties, the imams, aren’t even mentioned.
This drives me nuts.
This whole subject drives me nuts! I simply can’t understand why cowardice is being touted as the most important virtue in the face of threats of violence.
Yes, Ophelia, you have done a great job pointing out how silly this whole business is. I know that you know all this, but perhaps it’s worthwhile repeating how vital it is to keep the background of the cartoon fiasco in focus, and to bear in mind that people like Theo van Gogh have been killed, and people like Rushdie and Hirsi Ali have been threatened with death, because people have taken offence at what they did, not because some hyperventilating imam threw in another, really offensive, picture into the mix and raised the blood pressure of offence amongst the ignorant. It may be an insult to Muslims to act as if they are all thin skinned, and ready to respond with violence to any perceived insult to their religion or prophet, but the self-censorship is a response to terrorism, however distant the echo of it is.
Of course, in Rushdie’s case a head of state actually condemned the citizen of another state to death for something he had written, and an aide offered a large reward to anyone who killed him, and leaders in the ‘free world’ fell over themselves in an effort to blame Rushdie for his own troubles. And now university and other presses are competing for the coward of the year award. And even Index on Censorship turned tail and ran. Freedom is not won this way, and, in fact, this episode illustrates just how much we have lost. The question now is: How can we get it back?
If it’s that distant an echo, Eric, then how can it be really considered a response to terrorism? Rather than a response to misguided/disproportionate fears of terrorism?
I don’t get the “not central” reasoning. Perhaps the cartoons not central. But they surely are relevant, right?.
Yes, Jenavir, obviously the cartoons are relevant. They may even be, in the minds of those who have run away to fight another day, central. And the response to terrorism may be all of misguided and disaproportionate, risk assessment being distorted by past acts of terrorism. Of course, we won’t know how misguided until someone actually publishes something that constitutes a real offence against any group with a radical wing, and then watch the reaction. But, if publishers are not responding to the threat of terrorist acts, what are they responding to?
I guess my concern is simply this. Rushdie’s Satanic Verses set this whole thing off. Theo van Gogh and the cartoons followed similar patterns of offence and terror. Now almost everyone (remembering Continuum’s willingness to publish Does God Hate Women?) is shying away from publishing anything that may be in the slightest derogatory of Islam.
Perhaps these events have made rational risk assessment (Ophelia’s words) difficult, but to use another of Ophelia’s words, there is something craven about the way Yale UP and Index on Censorship have behaved. Yale we might be able to understand. They could lose funding from important sources, and universities like money as much as or more than freedom. But the Index on Censorship is all about freedom. If it runs away at even the barest hint of cordite in the morning air then we have lost a lot.
The whole thing is very, very simple.
This organisation lauds those who risk their lives, or at least their freedom to deliver truths which would otherwise be undeliverable, the sort of people who tweeted the Iranian elections drama are heroes in their dramas.
But when it comes to put their money where their mouths are, when there is some sort of risk they might actually face the vaguest of threats, well somehow their tune changes.
They are cowards and hypocrites.
The decision to publish the cartoons was an editorial one, it should have been left at that level.
Sunny’s not the guy he once was. After the Centre for Social Cohesion published an anti-racist report of mine he slated it for not focussing enough on ‘Islamophobia’ and sided with the idiots from the MCB and ‘Islamophobia Watch’ who were attacking me with the same claim.
Sunny is definitely the weakest link in LibCon and he throws a hissy-fit at the least provocation. He’s supposed to be a professional journalist FFS, but he’s incapable of logical, evidence-based argument. I love it when he attempts to discuss scientific matters like global warming because it’s clear he doesn’t know enough science to change a light bulb.
Anyway, his attacks on Standing were a disgrace but then his level of debate never rises above ad homs and smears by association. I’m glad to see Standing has not been bullied into silence though: his articles on Harry’s Place are generally excellent.
Sunny’s article on IoC was particularly weak but then it wouldn’t have been out of place in The Guardian or the New Statesman: cowardice dressed up as respect for the sensitivities of others. The underlying assumption is that Muslims are incapable of moral choice in their response to the cartoons. It’s a racist assumption dressed up as respect.