NYT exec editor: Charlie Hebdo cartoons just too offensive to print
By T. Becket Adams | January 8, 2015 | 7:29 pm
New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet explained Thursday that the Grey Lady won’t republish provocative Muhammad cartoons from a French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo because the images are simply too obscene.
“Was it hard to deny our readers these images? Absolutely. But we still have standards, and they involve not running offensive material,” Baquet told the Washington Examiner. “That includes the videos of beheadings, by the way.”
Likely Islamic terrorists attacked Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices on Wednesday, murdering 10 journalists and two police officers. It’s believed that the magazine’s many cartoons mocking the prophet of Islam prompted the attack.
As such, the cartoons are now at the center of the story, their images reportedly the entire reason for the Paris massacre.
“I agree that the cartoons are central to the story. And it was hard as hell not to publish them. But to understand the real sensitivity of this issues you would have to publish the most sensitive images,” Baquet said.
“Have you seen them? They are sexual, and truly provocative. They are not the ones a handful of papers have run. Those are mild. If you really want to understand the issue, you would have to show the most over-the-top images,” he said. “And they don't meet our standards. They are provocative on purpose. They show religious figures in sexual positions. We do not show those.”
Elsewhere, in separate statement to Politico, Baquet explained that the New York Times is also trying to avoid offending its Muslim readers: “[L]et's not forget the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet.”
“I don't give a damn about the head of [the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] but I do care about that family and it is arrogant to ignore them,” he said
In 1999, the New York Times republished an image of Chris Ofili's “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a painting “with a clump of elephant dung on one breast and cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines in the background,” Politico reported.
Also, in 2005, 2006 and 2010, the New York Times republished anti-Semitic cartoons. Further, between 2009 and 2011, the New York Times published multiple images with racial overtones, Gawker reported.
Baquet took over at the helm of the New York Times in 2014 after the noisy ouster of former chief Jill Abramson.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nyt-exec-editor-charlie-hebdo-cartoons-just-too-offensive-to-print/article/2558408
