provocation versus information
It seems to me we need to draw a distinction that I haven't seen anyone make -- not that anyone hasn't made it, I'm sure -- between the publication of the now-infamous Mohammed cartoons by the Jyllands-Posten and other newspapers (or websites, or television news programs, or whatever). The Jyllands-Posten has made it clear that they commissioned and published the cartoons merely to show that they could, and to provoke discussion about an objectionable taboo. They poked someone with a stick to show that they could poke someone with a stick; their entire purpose was to be provocative. This is, in a word, dumb.But once those cartoons became the source of a significant public controversy, and prompted serious political violence, they became inescapably newsworthy. For newspapers in the United States (for the close-to-home example) to refuse to show their readers the topic of controversy amounts to a decision to withhold critical facts from the people they are supposed to serve and inform. Publish the fucking cartoons, folks. If people yell at you, and hold up angry and offensive signs, boo-fucking-hoo; if newspaper staff are threatened with violence, we have a collective obligation as communities and as a nation to protect them.
But the issues are not the same. The Jyllands-Posten wasn't trying to convey newsworthy information; other newspapers are deliberately withholding newsworthy information. Both are bad choices for newspapers to make.
I'd post the cartoons here, if I knew how to embed images in a blog. But you can see them here, at the website of the massively awful Michelle Malkin. Not good business for professional media to show their readers that asshole bloggers offer them information that they can't get from their local newspaper.
posted by Chris Bray @ 7:14 AM
6 Comments:
I disagree that "provocative" = "dumb", that "deliberately offensive" is inherently pointless. Sometimes it's necessary, productive, and the right thing to do. Satire can be uncomfortable, but satire that hits as close to reality as the cartoons -- which represent some substantial issues in modern Islam -- needs to be addressed.
The cartoon that depicts Mohommed with a bomb for a turban is massively dumb, unless one doesn't care to have allies among Muslims. It assumes that there is no issue among Muslims -- that they are all, by reason of being Muslims -- at least incipient terrorists. That's a pretty big concession to make, simply for the purpose of doing provocative propaganda.
Chris, we have taken opposite positions on this here (a fortuitous event!). I didn't notice this when I posted (I was planning on making my post longer but didn't have time). But, I'd like to say--I do not see why it is necessary to actually post the cartoons in order for us to be informed about them. Maybe that does need to happen, but it hasn't been made clear to me why.
I might add that these kind of disagreements about what is needed between somewhat rational people is a perfect example of why free speech is a good idea.
Mr. Luker: that's one out of twelve. Given the percentage of non-Muslim Westerners who think that Islam isn't much more than a time bomb in its midst (no, I'm not defending them, but trying to make a point about the range of opinion represented by the cartoons, which have too frequently been discussed in the abstract as an undifferentiated "offensive" group, must as Islam and Muslims are too often discussed in the uniform abstract....) that's about right. Can we talk about these things with some perspective?
I think I was talking about these things with some perspective. I was talking about one of the twelve cartoons and didn't generalize to the whole lot of them. As for the others, they weren't particularly interesting were they?
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