The New York Times public editor on Wednesday said she disagreed with the paper’s decision not to publish an image of Charlie Hebdo’s new cover, which features a Muhammed cartoon.
Margaret Sullivan said she respected the Times policy of not publishing the controversial Muhammed cartoons, but in this case she felt the news value of the cover outweighed the potential for offending readers.
“The cartoon itself, while it may disturb the sensibilities of a small percentage of Times readers, is neither shocking nor gratuitously offensive. And it has, undoubtedly, significant news value,” she wrote.
Sullivan did indicate that the Times was right not to publish all of the Muhammed cartoons.
“I can understand why The Times would not have published ‘the most incendiary images,’ as the executive editor, Dean Baquet, described them last week. He felt those extreme cartoons would not have been necessary to illustrate the story about the terrorist attack that killed eight members of the satirical newspaper’s staff,” she wrote. “I certainly don’t think that decision was ‘cowardly,’ as many have charged.”
The first edition since the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris headquarters was published on Wednesday. The cover featured a cartoon of Muhammed crying and holding a sign that reads, “Je suis Charlie.”
Multiple news outlets, including CNN and the Associated Press, have refrained from publishing Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammed cartoons.
And, there should be someone better, ie much much more professional, than Dean running the paper. What kind of person in such a responsible position goes around publicly calling someone an a@@hole ? What kind of person does that!!! Says a lot about his thought process and how low the NY Times has sunk. Poor judgement from this…person.
Of COURSE it was cowardly. In fact, that’s the whole problem with the New York Times. They’ve become so comfortable, they’re mired in cowardice.
Chickenshits.
So I take it that’s not an AP photo. Do you mind crediting the photographer TPM for the photo you have, or is that from your own staff photographer?
“The cartoon itself, while it may disturb the sensibilities of a small percentage of Times readers, is neither shocking nor gratuitously offensive.”
What an ethnocentric load of crap. Not gratuitously offensive to you.
I’m sure they would likewise put anti-Semetic pics on the front page if there was “news value”?
We once talked about the Times as a significant source of News. Now we are talking about a paper that fired its Labor Editor and replaced that section with a Men’s Fashion section.