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A. Both seem to get shot to death on occasion.
Though the colloquial phrase is "going postal," not "going newspaper-y," murderous readers have murdered editors in much the same fashion as murderous workers, postal and otherwise, have murdered co-workers, bosses, estranged former lovers, etc.
So I wasn't overjoyed last week when I read a suggestion by one of our columnists, Diana West, that readers should ask their local newspapers to publish the Kurt Westergaard cartoon that has him being the target of a death sentence from Muslim fanatics. His offense? Publishing a cartoon in Denmark of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb in his turban.
Many Muslims think that pictures or drawings of Mohammed are a form of idolatry, deserving of the artist/drawer being killed, whether or not that person is a Muslim.
Fanatics. Jerks. Barbarians. Savages.
Yep.
About on a par with some Christians down through history who killed people because they stepped on a host, or because they allegedly practiced witchcraft, etc. I mention that because, while we ought to condemn the Muslims in this instance, we need to understand that the evil is not confined to practitioners of that specific religion. Down through history, humans have had a bloody history of treating others as "them," as subhumans, as expendable, as killable.
Back when the cartoons were first published in 2005, we condemned the reaction from Muslims. Muslims certainly are free to protest the cartoon, just as Christians by the millions protested the 1987 photograph of a small plastic crucifix submerged in the glass of a scumbag "artist's" urine, then displayed as art.
As disgusting and offensive as Andres Serrano's shock-scandal display was, it didn't merit his being shot. It did, and to my mind still does, merit the photograph and the photographer being labeled as disgusting, being shunned. That photograph won an art award in a government-sponsored contest, further proof that some "art judges" are idiots.
But we don't kill idiots for being idiots.
Nor, it seems to me, do we do as Diana West suggests, and publish the Danish cartoon that we know is clearly offensive to some Muslims.
Just because we can do something doesn't mean that we should do something.
Now, if there was a legitimate news purpose to publishing the cartoon, and if there was a need to do so, I would put it into the newspaper, along with some words that let readers know that I myself had made that decision.
Then, to be truthful, I'd carry a shotgun back and forth to work for awhile. Many Muslims aren't assassins, but it only takes one.
I have a problem with West's thumb-your-nose-at-Islam suggestion, for the same reason that I have rarely participated in publishing photographs of dead bodies after local fires, accidents or crimes. Every so often, there is a legitimate news need or purpose in doing so, but most of the time, more people are offended than are informed. Dead bodies, after all, look ... dead. "Decapitated" is a word that lets people know that a body's head has been severed. Seeing that sight is a whole other experience, gut-wrenching and, if the body belonged to a loved one, horrifying.
Why do it?
Rarely, it serves a legitimate purpose. But not usually in small-town newspapers.
So just because I am outraged that some Muslims - not all, perhaps not even most, possibly not even many, considering that Muslims are numbered in the billions - would kill a cartoonist for lines and shadings drawn on paper, that does not mean that I should offend most Muslims, or risk bringing violence on a bunch of us.
Sure, I'm averse to being decapitated, which seems to be the Islamoterrorists' coup de grace du jour. But responding police officers could also be killed, as could co-workers, people in my home, our dogs or chickens ... the consequences are not clearly predictable.
I think that's wrong.
There are many things we as journalists can do to make our points.
Some of them, we shouldn't do.
I think that is just as true in other walks of life, in relationships, in arguments, in political debates. Just because we can show someone in an embarrassing or awkward situation doesn't mean that we should - or should not.
I have offended thousands of people (that I know of) during nearly 50 years in this business. Sometimes, in hindsight, I was justified. Sometimes, I wasn't. Many times, I never did know until afterward which was which.
If the occasion arises when there is news value to that cartoon, and a need to see it besides, I'll publish it.
Until then, Diana West's suggestion is, in my judgment, exhibitionism, which is not journalism.
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Denny Bonavita is the editor and publisher of McLean Publishing Co. in west-central Pennsylvania, including the Courier-Express in DuBois. E-mail: denny2319@windstream.net
