Editors on the chain?

Column It would be more credible to name what
freedom of the press is endangered here every day, instead of on the
cartoon controversy. You don't have freedom, you take it
itself. Again and again. Or, to put it in a less boyish way: May
freedoms should also be guaranteed in democratic states - only their
Regular practice gives them substance and shape. In addition
that a little freedom is no freedom at all: those who insist on it must
exhaust them to the brim, at least from time to time. This
applies in particular to media freedom.

There is currently a lot of talk about it and the free word. This would be
That's a good thing. Unfortunately, the occasion is unappetizing: a right-wing Danish
Newspaper has shown Muslims, all Muslims, with twelve cartoons about
gave the prophets the racist finger. You do that
not. The prophet is not usually depicted figuratively. Jews
and Protestants hold the same view, among the monotheisms only
Catholics with the symbolic power of the image. The
Danish caricatures rather of powerer quality, so not funny, with
one exception, but that's not the point here.

In any case, they were, it seemed, a shot in the dark. Denmark's
Muslims were annoyed, but only moderately provoked. Are
probably already somewhat hardened. In the kingdom that, for some unknown reason
still has the reputation of being a small, friendly, tolerant and
principled little country, there is a rude attitude towards
Immigrants; the new migration laws violate human rights, 
and the media sometimes call Muslims riff-raff or worse. So
The editor-in-chief of Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten
did not let his Muslims get away with it. They did not play their part.
After all, Jyllands-Posten has been associated with agitation against migrants and Islam by
the provincial newspaper has become the most widely circulated Postille.
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen shares this background.

So the cartoons were displayed again and again for weeks on
Muslim community leaders, assorted with the question of whether
it really didn't hurt them. At some point, a preacher came to the
hatred and went on an agitation tour. The rest seems
known - even if serious Middle East experts agree on this,
that the torching of Western embassies in Damascus and elsewhere
little with the caricatures and a lot with the new hard European
hand against Syria, Iran, Hamas et les autres. Conflicts
are always played out on the level of symbols.

Can Jyllands-Posten claim freedom of the press for such things?
She may. This is how the principle of freedom works: even if they are disgusting
results, we want to stand ready to defend them.

That's just a bit hypocritical. The truth is that every senior
Editor the situation, a text or a caricature
or having to reject them because they hurt Chris's feelings.
offend or carry anti-Semitic undertones. AFP
has recently published a long list of current censorship cases.
 
Journalistic ethics would demand this in the case of Jyllands-Posten,
that we first fend off any attack on the freedom of the newspaper.
But the fact that we then, among journalists and in public, have this
editorial team. Some of these caricatures were
clearly racist - in the strict sense of the definition: they were aimed at
on ethnic stereotypes, generalized, asserted the general
inferiority of Islam and incited hatred against an entire group
of people. It was racist agitation.

Worse: Afterwards, a few journalists around Alice Schwarzer
and Helmut Markwort, in an Islamophobic manifesto for the
freedom of expression. They would be more credible if they had
They lost a word about what media freedom means to us every day.
jeopardized, sometimes even suspended: the interests of advertising customers,
self-censorship, media concentration, the authoritarian neoliberal
Mainstream, inadequate craft ... Markwort would have a few very personal facts, facts, facts.

> Oliver Fahrni is a freelance publicist.