Charlie Hebdo shooting: Debate over publishing the Muhammad cartoons

When gunmen launched a deadly attack in the Paris-based office of Charlie Hebdo, a weekly satiricalpaper with a history of publishing cartoons lampooning radical Muslims and the Prophet Muhammad, the Washington Free Beacon says it didn't think twice about publishing those illustrations.

"We went right ahead with it. No hesitation," saysLachlan Markay, a reporter who wrote a story about the attack for the Washington-based news website.

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"If it were just someone submitting that cartoon for publication in the everyday operations of the newsroom, it would be perfectly fine to decide it wasn't in goodtaste, it was too offensive.But I thinkthat all went out the window theminutethose gunmenbroke intothe offices."

The Free Beacon reasoned that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad had become news when people were killed for running them, Markay said.

Caving to fanatical demands

"I think to decidenot toshow them even after thosepeoplewerekilled isessentiallycavingto thefanaticaldemands of thepeoplewho went in and shot up that office," Markay said.

But many newsrooms around the world struggled with the decision about publishing the images.While many papers published editorial cartoons in support of CharlieHebdoand free speech, some of those same periodicals refused to publish any of the Muhammad cartoons.

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Some called ita cowardly decision.

"I think the idea of cowardice is really interesting," said David Studer, CBC's director of journalistic standards and practices. "Because I think if you are saying us not running these things means the bad guys win, my view is that remaining civilized and sticking to our principles is what defeats bad guys, not giving in to the emotion of the moment."

Studer said theCBC decided against running the cartoons, arguing that to show thosedepictionsof Muhammad would needlessly offend Muslims, who consider such depictions sacrilege.

And hewasn't alonein puttingforward that argument.The New York Timesexecutive editorDean Baquet told the paper's public editor he spent about half of the day deciding whether or notto publish the cartoons, changinghis mind twice before ultimately deciding not to run the images.

'Gratuitous insult'

We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these are gratuitous insult," Baquet said.

The Washington Post ran one imageon its editorial pages while the main U.S. networks, including ABC News,CNN and Fox backed off from publishing thecartoons. The Associated Press also declined to make them available.

In Canada, of the Toronto-based newspapers, only the National Post ran the controversial cartoons.Almost none of the U.K. papers ran the cartoons, nor did the BBC andthe Paris-based papersLe Monde or Le Figaro.

"I think not wanting to offendpeopleis aperfectly fine attitude, but thenotion that the primary sort ofdriverof newsroom policy should be to notoffend people I think is very misguided. and Ithink there are concernsthatmustoverridethat in situations like this," Markay said.

The German newspaperBZ printed 43 covers thatCharlie Hebdohadprinted over the past years.In Denmark where Jyllands Posten published several cartoons mockingMuhammad in 2005, igniting protests across the Muslim world four newspapers republished cartoons from the French newspaper. (Jyllands Posten, whose staff have been under police protection since their cartoon controversy, decided not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons.)

Canada's own satirical magazine Frankpublishedcartoons, as didQuebec's major French-language newspapers, whojointly published a Charlie Hebdo editorial cartoon of Muhammad "to demonstrate support for the fundamental principles of freedom of expression."

Images of the Muhammad cartoon could also be found on the Global Newswebsite, butCTVNews would not comment on its policy. Meanwhile,CBC's French service, Radio-Canada, took a different approach than its English counterpartand chose to run the cartoon on TV and its website.

MichelCormier, Radio-Canada'sexecutivedirector of news and current affairs, said the image was used sparingly, and with the intention of providing context to the events unfolding in Paris.

Images not needed to understand story

Studersaid he disagreed thatthose images areneeded to understand the story.

"The fact that they existed is what provoked this. Not how outrageous they were or how provocative theywere butthat there were images at all."

Some argued thatnews organizations were pandering to the Muslim communitybut have had no qualms about running content thatmight insult other religions.

"Itis in my viewconcerning, if our national broadcaster arbitrarily decides that some faiths can be subject to comedic interpretation, whereas others are exempt or otherwise deemed to be 'off limits,'"British Columbia Conservative MP DanAlbas said in his blog, referring to the CBC'slongtraditionof satire.

But Studersaid the decision to not publish a Muhammad cartoon didn'tmeanthe CBC was playing favourites with some religious groups.

"A part of our job as Canada'snationalbroadcaster is to promote tolerance and respect and to recognize that unlike some other religions,whereyou see statues and you see pictures of deities, it's one of the tenets of Islam that the Prophet not be depicted in pictures or cartoons,"Studersaid.