Freedom of Speech and Religious Satire

[a_cubed]

It's amazing that in a row over whether or not a bunch of satirical cartoons are free to be published or should be censored because of religious sensibilities, nowhere on any BBC visual medium (i.e. TV and web) can i seem to find either the cartoons themselves or links to them online. Even the "this story in pictures" shows images of violent protest and the defacement of national flags but not the cartoons in question. Is this how the BBC stands up for journalistic freedom?

On the same week that the government was, thankfully, defeated on its ridiculous "religious hatred" proposals,this news story shows that the "clash of civilisations" is real. It also shows the power held by newspaper proprietors when the French-Egyptian owner of France Soir sacked the principle editor for reproducing the cartoons.

If I was one of the cartoonists involved I'd be asking everyone to put the cartoons in question up on their website in a show of support for freedom of political speech via art.

Comments

[tobyaw]

It was rather bizarre that a link on the BBC news site entitled In pictures: Cartoon outrage didn't actually have any images of the cartoons. And I'm somewhat disappointed that no British papers have published the cartoons, although the Spectator has one on the front page of their web site at the moment: http://www.spectator.co.uk/

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link. I've been reading articles and reader comments on news.bbc.co.uk and have been rather frustrated at the lack of the cartoons themselves.

Newswatch

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

I emailed a complaint to the BBC's Newswatch program about this and they've asked me for a phone number so they can talk to me briefly. I'll report here how that goes. They do say they've had a lot of comments and complaints about this story so they're looking at covering it.

For those who don't know newswatch is a fairly recetly launched show that's like the Radio 4 programme Feedback or the "Points of View" programme, but it focusses solely on BBC News output (in all its forms, but primarily on the TV news). It's not bad as such things go.

Re: Newswatch

[a-cubed.livejournal.com]

A lady from Newswatch called me back and had a chat then asked me to leave my views on their "message line" so they could use that as a question for the appropriate editor. Hopefully they'll let me know what if anything they plan to use and when.

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Ah - the editor was sacked. This makes so much more sense (FSVO...). Also, the paper's owned by a Copt, and I'd have thought they'd have less reason than most to support religious oppression.

[Googling on Mohammed Cartoons leads to quite a lot of good stuff, from the Dutch "Fun with Mohammed" cartoon, to an "Images of the Prophet Down the Ages" site (which links to an entire South Park episode, amongst other things) and a humorous piece from a Halifax (Canada, not West Yorks) paper]

It's also interesting to notice that the original cartoons were printed last September!

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

It takes a while for news to travel by camel...

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

[Googling on Mohammed Cartoons leads to quite a lot of good stuff]

I particularly like the Garfield cartoon