Mass Shooting At Newspaper In Paris

I thought Ross Douthat had a very compelling take on some of the ideas being bandied about here:

 

Spilling blood for Mohammad > Western ideology

 

How so, what's changed?

 

Matt Fucking Taibbi:

An unspeakable tragedy in Paris has given birth to a secondary censorship controversy here at home.

It was predictable that the savage attack on the French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo would inspire a crisis of confidence in the American/Western media: what to do about the "forbidden" images?

The news story had a clear narrative, about a bunch of cartoonists and humorists who were viciously murdered by radicals for publishing images of the Prophet Muhammad.

Since the attacks, consumers of Western news media have been showered with images of the appalling violence, which left 12 dead.

Yet in a business where the first, second and third question in the reporting of almost every news story is, "Can we get the art?" (images are commonly called "the art" in journalism), virtually no Western news outlet published "the art."

The few exceptions were new-media icons like The Huffington Post and Buzzfeed. Older, legacy outlets like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, and the Associated Press almost all turtled when faced with the decision of whether or not to print the offending cartoons.

In a world dominated by image journalism, we suddenly became lovers of letters again, satisfied that verbal descriptions are enough to convey the gist of the story.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/yes-virginia-cartoons-are-worth-fighting-

 

Great verb, turtled.

But it's Matt Taibbi. To some (many) he's just a jerk store special because he cusses in his articles. He's not legit because he says fuck and shit and calls deserved subjects cocksuckers.

 

Fuck the drones. I am starting to think someone is going to break out the nukes and do some serious ethnic cleansing.

 

Old Conventional Wisdom: Only tin-foil-hat wearing, FOX news watching, right wingers are afraid of scary Mooslims

New Conventional Wisdom: It's entirely appropriate for newspapers to decide not to publish offensive cartoons because they are afraid

 

Washington Post:
"Editor's note: An earlier version of this article included images offensive to various religious groups that did not meet the Post's standards, and should not have been published. They have been removed."

 

It's appropriate not to do things that are offensive unless they are news. The cartoons are now news. Commissioning one yourself would be a different story.

 

Discretion is often the better part of valor.

 

Gavin McInnes @Gavin_McInnes · 3 hours ago

I get why journalists are scared of offending Muslims. I just don't get why they're journalists.

 

Jeff Greenfield @greenfield64 · 52 minutes ago

Grim thought: if the murders in Paris dissuades others from publishing offensive matter, then it wasn't "senseless" at all; it "worked".