Editorial: Provocations Charlie Hebdo's way, not for all

A public vigil at the French embassy in Wellington. Photo / Hagen Hopkins

Others free to publish magazine’s retaliatory cover but solidarity does not require conformism

The Herald did not publish this week the cover of the Charlie Hebdo magazine featuring a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. We were free to do so, had we chosen, as the photograph of the cover was widely available and some news organisations here and overseas did so. We make no criticism of Charlie Hebdo, or of those other news outlets. The magazine's raison d'etre is to provoke and challenge notions of the mighty and the Almighty. It was responding in its own way to the murderous attack on its staff by terrorists warping the teachings of Islam. It is free to have done so and it should be.

To support that freedom of expression, however, is not to accept that it is compulsory to publish the provocations of Charlie Hebdo. There are many ways of showing solidarity. The satirical magazine, with a readership which knows what it does, and why, and pays to share its philosophies, is a quite different genre from a mass market publication serving a readership of all beliefs or no belief, the sum of New Zealand's minorities.

The Herald's policy has been not to publish images which, in our judgment, could cause harm among those affected. Harm is not only physical — deep spiritual offence and alienation are forms of harm. That risk arguabsly applies more to past cartoons of the prophet than for this week's cover, where a stance of defiance, reconciliation and ridicule are blended through the Muhammad figure.

Yet any image of him can be seen by some as gratuitous and blaspheming as an argument against blasphemy.

Similarly, we would not choose to publish images gratuitously denigrating Jews that might have run with international controversy in some Gulf states' newspapers. Or deliberately distasteful or harmful images of Christian or Hindu sacred figures.

A creator of the provocative St Matthew in the City billboards in Auckland, which we showed in the past because they offended some from other Christian churches, asked whether we showed more sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims than Christians. The answer is no. The billboards were of Christians challenging Christians over elements of belief. The evidence is that they were not designed to denigrate or mock others and that Christians, in the majority here, were less threatened by visual or verbal ridicule.

Freedom of expression requires there to be a freedom not to say, not to publish certain things. Critics of the Herald's stance and similar decisions made by the New York Times, many Fleet St papers and American television networks suggested there is a cowardice in not co-opting Charlie's visual argument against its attackers. One critic claimed that as religion is an idea to be adopted rather than something you are born with such as ethnicity or gender, it and similar ideas such as politics invited ridicule. Would it then be compulsory to re-publish political provocations from a local Nazi party publication to prove we uphold press freedom?

Unsurprisingly, this newspaper is and always has been a living advocate of freedom of the press. We are in the business of argument and debate, challenge and controversy.

Other media with the same commitment take a different approach. Surely, conformist response is the antithesis of Charlie Hebdo. As the French say, "chacun a son gout" — each to their own.

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