Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Run Charlie Cartoons? Times Frets as Others Act


The New York Times made an awkward attempt this afternoon to examine the presumably anxious debate in the American news media over whether or not to reproduce the new Charlie Hebdo cover with its image of Muhammad.

The trouble is, there isn’t much of a debate. The Times is one of just a handful of major American outlets that’s still unwilling to reprint the Muhammad image. Others practicing the self-censorship include the Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, ABC News and PBS.

Outlets that made the opposite decision and went ahead to show the image today included, in addition to our own Jewish Daily Forward, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Newsweek, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Houston Chronicle, New York Daily News, New York Post and even the U.S. government-owned Voice of America. And that’s obviously a partial list.

The New York Times explained its decision not to publish the image as “an editorial judgment.” The AP said its decision was “based on its policy to avoid images designed to provoke on the basis of religion.”

CNN’s explanation was more refreshingly blunt. A statement by network president Jeff Zucker, read on air by anchor Erin Burnett, said CNN gave priority to “our obligation to protect our journalists around the world.”

Nobody seems to have been quite as crass as the book publisher HarperCollins, which recently practiced a similar sort of self-censorship in deference to Muslim and Arab sensibiliities when it decided for purely commercial reasons to expunge Israel from a Middle East atlas that it sold for use in schools in the Gulf emirates.

The Daily Telegraph of London, which reported on the atlas December 31, explained:

Collins Bartholomew, the subsidiary of HarperCollins that specialises in maps, said that including Israel would have been “unacceptable” to their customers in the Gulf and the amendment incorporated “local preferences”.

The Telegraph went on to note:

A HarperCollins spokesperson said: “HarperCollins regrets the omission of the name Israel from their Collins Middle East Atlas. This product has now been removed from sale in all territories and all remaining stock will be pulped. HarperCollins sincerely apologises for this omission and for any offence caused.”

Nobody seems to have pulped the news reports that described the HarperCollins publishing coup at length but omitted the telling fact that HarperCollins is a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., owner of Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and a perennial favorite of the pro-Israel right.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.