The Mohamed cartoons -- not many lessons learned
Tuesday’s World Editors Forum meeting ended with an intense debate about the infamous Danish cartoon controversy, and the lessons that might be learned from it. The participants were from the various focal points of the controversy, including Joern Mikkelsen, the chief editor of the newspaper that started it all -- Jyllands-Posten – and the newspaper’s culture editor Fleming Rose (the man who commissioned the cartoons). Also participating were Eric LeBoucher of Le Monde, Imtiaz Alam from the South Asian Free Media Association in Pakistan, Hakeem Bello, the executive editor of Nigeria’s The National Interest newspaper, Andrei Richter of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute, and Khaled Al-Belshy, the deputy editor of Egyptian newspaper Al-Destour. The session was moderated by UNESCO’s Abdul-Waheed Khan and also featured much audience participation.
The moderator, Abdel-Waheed Khan, began the session by emphasizing that both;
- respect for freedom of speech, and
- respect for religion
That attempt to rationalize the issue began to lose focus as each speaker presented his point of view.
The first speaker was Mikkelsen, the Jyllands-Posten chief editor, who began his talk by listing several things that he wanted to clarify in the aftermath of the cartoon affair.
“No – JP is not an ultra right wing newspaper”
“No- JP is not the partner of an anti-Muslim worldwide movement”
No- JP was not seeking to trigger a clash of civilizations.”
And although Mikkelsen said, “the religious feelings of all people should be respected,” he also insisted that “religions too can be brought up for discussion – it’s the only way that society can move on.”
On whether or not JP would do it again, he said, “It’s hard to say.” His main reason for saying that, however, did not seem to be because of the global turmoil that printing the cartoons caused, but mainly because the cartoonists themselves were now at risk.
Khaled Al-Balshy, the deputy editor of Egypt’s Al-Destour weekly, began his speech by asking a key question: “How can we have a broader minded world?” He said the cartoon crisis had highlighted existing threats that could cause another clash. He also questioned the Egyptian government’s role in the crisis, beginning with its ambassador to Denmark’s insistence on upping the ante at every possible opportunity. Al-Balshy said this and other government efforts to enflame, rather than contain, the crisis, were taken because the government wanted to appear more “Muslim” than its primary opponent – the Muslim brotherhood -- in upcoming parliamentary elections at the time. And since the government controls a great deal of Egypt’s media, they managed to do so. He then broke down the three ways the press dealt with the situation:- some government affiliated papers poured oil on the blaze
- other independent papers that wanted to curry favor with the government did the same.
- Some newspapers that wanted to increase their circulation also tried to do so by fanning popular sentiment.
- He called papers that were neutral “negative” since they didn’t do anything to stop the flames…
- He singled out certain columnists for being moderate
- He said his own paper Al-Destour actually alerted the public that the government was overdoing it.
The basic problem for Al-Balshy was that people were protesting the cartoons while other important events (a ship sinking killing over a thousand people, activists being beaten up, elections being rigged) were not getting attention – mainly because the government wanted it that way…
Looking at things from a more global perspective, he said the Danish newspaper should have known that the prophet was a sacred figure; that they could criticize Islam, but not in this way. The western media that reprinted the cartoons also acted irresponsibly, he said. He concluded by saying that the cartoon incident showed that the western world looks at the Muslim world as a single entity, and vice versa.
Eric le Boucher of Le Monde defended his paper’s decision to publish their own Mohamed cartoons. The reason why they didn’t reprint the actual Danish cartoons he said, is because the paper was very aware that it was read in the Arab world, and was also not interested in putting its own correspondents in the Arab world in danger…Even though he condemned the Danish cartoonists’ attempts to link the prophet and terrorism, he could not accept the idea that picturing the prophet is blasphemy.
Imtiaz Alam, the general secretary of the South Asian Free Media Association in Pakistan, called the Danish experiment “bad news”… Why should the editors push the limits like this, he asks.
In his case, this situation put him in a tough position vis a vis the free press since he’s been championing it for years… since free press now had a bad reputation in his part of the world – as a result of the cartoons.
This issue was not one of free expression, he says, but one of purposefully hurting the feelings of other people. “Just because Muslims don’t like these cartoons doesn’t mean they don’t have a sense of humor,” he concluded.
Hakeem Bello, the executive editor of Nigeria’s The National Interest newspaper, said ignorance of faith is unacceptable, especially when it comes to editors whose job is supposed to be based on knowledge.
Andre Richter of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute tried to summarize what happened in Russia, concluding that the cartoon crisis showed that it was impossible to control all 50,000 publications in the country, but did show that it is possible to seriously influence what can and cant be published…
JP culture editor Fleming Rose seemed as equally unrepentant about the brouhaha caused by the cartoons as his boss. For him, the core problem was that everybody was talking about Muslim prohibitions, even though every religion has taboos. It would be disastrous if we had to follow all of these, he said…Overall the discussion, and the audience fray afterward, descended into the same kind of cross accusations and pandering to populism that the cartoon incident itself featured…
