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Truth and ConsequencesWhat is the point of a paper of record that decides the untarnished record is too much for readers?

By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, at 11:53 AM ET

Do you ever wonder what is the greatest enemy of the free press? One might mention a few conspicuous foes, such as the state censor, the monopolistic proprietor, the advertiser who wants either favorable coverage or at least an absence of unfavorable coverage, and so forth. But the most insidious enemy is the cowardly journalist and editor who doesn't need to be told what to do, because he or she has already internalized the need to please—or at least not to offend—the worst tyranny of all, which is the safety-first version of public opinion.

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Take, just for an example, the obituaries for Earl Butz, a once-important Republican politician who served presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford as secretary for agriculture until compelled to resign after making a loutish and humorless observation in the hearing of the Watergate whistle-blower John Dean. In the words of his New York Times obituarist, Butz (who "died in his sleep while visiting his son William," which, I must say, makes the male offspring sound exceptionally soporific) had "described blacks as 'coloreds' who wanted only three things—satisfying sex, loose shoes and a warm bathroom." There isn't a grown-up person with a memory of 1976 who doesn't recall that Butz said that Americans of African descent required only "a tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit." Had this witless bigotry not been reported accurately, he might have held onto his job. But any reader of the paper who was less than 50 years old could have read right past the relevant sentence without having the least idea of what the original controversy had been "about."

What on earth is the point of a newspaper of record that decides that the record itself may be too much for us to bear? My question is prompted by some recent developments from a previous front-page sensation. In Denmark last week, the authorities detained three people in an alleged plot to murder a 72-year-old Dane named Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard is an illustrator who lives peacefully in a university town. Not very long ago, he joined with other cartoonists in an open society in drawing some caricatures of the alleged "prophet" Mohammed. The object of the satire was to break the largely self-imposed taboo on the criticism of Islam and its various icons. The satire was wildly successful, in that it resulted in hysterical Muslims making public idols out of images they had proclaimed to be unshowable lest they became idols. Much nasty violence and intimidation accompanied this stupidity.

Anyway, last week, almost every Danish newspaper made a deliberate decision to reprint the offending cartoons. Perhaps, if you live in most of the countries where this column of mine is syndicated or reprinted, you wonder what all the fuss can have been about. Certainly, if you live in the United States or Britain, you will be wondering still. This is because your newspapers have decided for you—as with Butz—that you must be shielded from the unpalatable truth. Or can it really be that? We live in the defining age of the image and the picture; how can it be that the whole point of an entirely visual story can be deliberately left out? (To see the original cartoons, by the way, click here.) I have a feeling that the decision to protect you from the images was determined this time by something as vulgar as fear.

The cowardice of the mainstream American culture was something to see the first time around. The only magazines that bucked the self-censorship trend, or the capitulation to undisguised terror, were the conservative Weekly Standard and the atheist Free Inquiry—two outlets (for both of which I have written) with a rather small combined circulation. Borders thereupon pulled Free Inquiry from its shelves, with the negligible consequence that I will never do a reading or buy a book at any of its sites ever again. (By the way, I urge you to follow suit.) I think it's pretty safe to say that most Americans never even saw this sellout going on. But that was because their own newspapers were too shamefaced to report a surrender of which they were themselves a part.

In Canada, only two minority papers reprinted the cartoons. The Western Standard, now online only, and the Jewish Free Press were promptly taken before a sort of scrofulous bureaucratic peoples' court describing itself as the Alberta Human Rights Commission. If you think that's a funny name, try the title of the complainant: the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada. Who knows how long such a stupid "hate speech" case might have dragged on or how much public money and time it might have consumed, but last week the Islamic supremes decided to drop it. "I understand that most Canadians see this as an issue of freedom of speech," said Syed Soharwardy of the case that he had originated, adding "that principle is sacred and holy in our society." Soharwardy went on to say, rather condescendingly perhaps, that: "I believe Canadian society is mature enough not to absorb the messages that the cartoons sent. Only a very small fraction of Canadian media decided to publish those cartoons." Without the word not and without the sinister idea that Soharwardy's permission is required for anything, that first sentence would have been a perfectly good if banal statement. But with the addition of his remark about the "small fraction" and the concomitant satisfaction about the general reticence, we have no choice but to conclude that Soharwardy is satisfied on the whole with the level of frightened deference to be found north of the U.S. border. I mention this only because the level of frightened deference to be found south of that border is still far in excess of what any censor, or even self-censor, might dare to wish.

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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution.

COMMENTS

Comments from the Fray

I understand why the Danes are doing it. I absolutely agree that the cartoons should be available for public view, and they are to anyone with access to the internet. But aren't there certain boundaries that should be respected when it comes to the news? I'm not suggesting that it should necessarily be drawn at these cartoons, but I think everyone would agree that some things don't need to be trotted out for public view. The problem is that those boundaries may be rather arbitrary.

--Anse

(To reply, click here)

To refrain from publishing for fear of future violence does worse than to condone the use of threats to intimidate the publishers, it rewards those making the threats and proves unequivocally that such threats are effective, thereby encouraging repeated and expanded use of such threats in the future, and emboldens other extremists to consider similar tactics to advance their own agendas.

--bmgreene

(To reply, click here)

While I admire Mr. Hitchens' Voltairean delight in criticizing and poking fun at what other people take to be sacred, I think he should also recognize that people's self-censorship is not merely the result of fear. Many of us hold our tongues out of respect for others. For the same reason that I don't tell my corpulent neighbor that he's a fat slob I don't tell my Moslem friends that they are credulous idiots. (Also, I think that religions are more complex things than mere credos, but that's another issue.)

--responder

(To reply, click here)

The cartoons were not actually reprinted to support freedom of speech or to express solidarity with the supposedly targeted cartoonist, but as a further expression of majority Danes' fear of losing a homogenous environment and desire to alienate immigrants of all kinds, particularly those who are Muslim or brown. From my news reading, it appears that most Muslims commenting on the situation (though of course they are not the most often quoted) agree that freedom of speech should be protected and the newspapers have a right to print them. What they object to is the transparent use of editorial rights to squander the editorial responsibility of publishing incisive satire rather than ignorant stereotype, and to report news with integrity rather than the aggressive fear of school yard bullies.

--hmcc8

(To reply, click here)

(2/18)

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