The Charlie Hebdo debate distorts meaning of free speech

I want to repeat something I said in a post yesterday, because of the harsh reaction that The New York Times has received in some quarters for its decision not to reprint the Charlie Hebdo cartoons:

I support — and we all should support — any publication that chooses to reprint the cartoons as a show of solidarity. I would encourage outlets to do it if doing so is within their editorial mission. However, free expression requires that we acknowledge that the choice must be left up to each outlet — that free expression includes the right to determine what one expresses, when and how.

Here is what Dean Baquet of the Times told the paper’s public editor:

Mr. Baquet told me that he started out the day Wednesday convinced that The Times should publish the images, both because of their newsworthiness and out of a sense of solidarity with the slain journalists and the right of free expression.
He said he had spent “about half of my day” on the question, seeking out the views of senior editors and reaching out to reporters and editors in some of The Times’s international bureaus. They told him they would not feel endangered if The Times reproduced the images, he told me, but he remained concerned about staff safety.
“I sought out a lot of views, and I changed my mind twice,” he said. “It had to be my decision alone.”
Ultimately, he decided against it, he said, because he had to consider foremost the sensibilities of Times readers, especially its Muslim readers. To many of them, he said, depictions of the prophet Muhammad are sacrilegious; those that are meant to mock even more so. “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.”
“At what point does news value override our standards?” Mr. Baquet asked. “You would have to show the most incendiary images” from the newspaper; and that was something he deemed unacceptable.
Did he make the right decision? I think the Times probably should have shown the cartoons as part of its news coverage — to show what the fuss was about (mostly for its print readers). But we also need to acknowledge that, in the Internet age, that may not be necessary. It is rather easy to find the cartoons on the web and the reader who is interested can just do a search.

The Times’ editors have been called “cowards” (by journalist and professor Marc Cooper) and “wimpy” (by cartoonist Ted Rall), with the implication being that the Times — and other outlets — were required to cede any editorial discretion to the larger solidarity movement.

I respect both Cooper and Rall immensely, but I think this line of argument is absurd. It also is a fallacy — an ad hominem attack, or name-calling — and does nothing to shift the debate or add to it.

Free expression, as I said, cuts in more than one direction. We need to support the publications that publish the cartoons, even encourage others to do so. But we also need to respect the decisions made by those editors who choose not to run the cartoons — that is, after all, the other side of the free-speech debate, as Glenn Greenwald tweets:

Editors must have the right to publish or not publish what they want or think is important, as free of outside influence as possible — whether the influence comes from government, big business or the crowd. That is how free speech should work.

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Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.
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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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