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NYTimes Editor Doubles Down: Don’t Offend Muslims, Offend Catholics and Jews
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On January 16, 2015 @ 11:28 am In The Point | 20 Comments
Nothing we couldn’t have guessed from the New York Times’s reporting on the Middle East which is heavily slanted in favor of Muslims and against Jews.
As previously noted, the Times has a history of publishing artwork and cartoons that have offended both Jews and Christians. See its coverage of Chris Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary” in 1999, which very much offended the Catholic League; an Iranian exhibition of “anti-Jewish art” in 2006; and an Iranian cartoonist’s “anti-Jewish caricatures” in 2010. So, at least up until Dean Baquet’s tenure as executive editor, which began last year, the Times’ policy against “gratuitous insult” did not preclude offensive religious images.
The image of the prophet Muhammad, however, seems to occupy its own category, with its own rules. Last week, Baquet told me via email that as editor of the Times he had to consider “the Muslim family in Brooklyn who read us and is offended by any depiction of what he sees as his prophet.” [sic] When I replied, “I just wonder about the Jewish family in Brooklyn,” Baquet responded as follows:
I would really do some reporting — I did — to make sure these parallels are similar for the two religions.You may find they are not. In fact they really are not.
Baquet’s argument, if I’m reading him correctly, is that a cartoonish depiction of Muhammad is more offensive, categorically, than a cartoon that depicts, say, anti-Semitic caricatures of Jews trying to fabricate a Holocaust that, per the cartoonist, never took place.
Baquet’s reply is condescending, but at least he’s no longer screaming obscenities at people on Facebook. That’s a step up for him.
More importantly he has admitted that the New York Times has people it will and won’t offend. Offending Jews and Catholics is fine.
But don’t you dare offend a Muslim.
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