The cartoon episode seems to be spinning quite out of control. Middle Eastern countries are calling for economic boycotts (a very legitimate form of protest, as is the “buy Danish” groundswell). Angry mobs burn embassies, and the Boston Globe editors take the right course (not publishing the cartoons) but for the wrong reasons. They opine, "Journalists in free societies have a healthy impulse to assert their hard-won right to insult powerful forces in society."
Sorry. Journalists have no “right to insult” those who are powerful or not. Their right is to publish facts and opinion without regard to their impact on the powerful, provided these facts and opinions are judged to be significant.
As a silly but illustrative example, publishing a picture of the President of the United States in his pajamas could well meet the Globe’s criterion of “insult powerful forces in society”. But to publish such a picture would be inappropriate unless the President had chosen to be seen in his pajamas, which would give the picture journalistic significance. What separates organs like the Globe from the tabloids is that they (in theory) hold to a higher standard of what material is important enough to merit publication. The editor seems to have forgotten this aspect here, and this is not the only time the Globe has confused the right to publish embarrassing facts with a “right to insult”. This is the sophomoric confusion between freedom and license.
Explaining their decision not to publish the Danish cartoons the editor writes: "…publishing the cartoons reflects an obtuse refusal to accept the profound meaning for a billion Muslims of Islam's prohibition against any pictorial representation of the prophet." This assertion would be more creditable if the Globe had some history of applying it consistently. There are about a billion Catholics on this planet, and many hundreds of millions of Evangelical Christians. Can the editor name any similar occasion where the Globe has forsaken its self-proclaimed “right to insult” in deference to their religious sensibilities?
Article comments
1 - David M. Brown
The analysis should be a little clearer about the distinction between propriety (or morally right action) and political rights. We do have the right to do the wrong things, so long as those wrong things don't include violating the equal rights of others. If journalists did not have the right to arbitrarily insult politicians (as opposed to libel them), the politicians would have a "right" to shut down a great many newspapers.
As for the cartoons, all newspapers without exception should reprint them as an act of defiance of the Islamo-thugs.
2 - Harry Forbes
I sympathise, David. But when I hear the Globe editor claim a "right to insult" without mention of their responsibility, to me it smacks of arrogance that they have used as a weapon in being part of "Pinch Sulzberger's propaganda machine", rather than merely as an honest mistake.