Controversial Cartoons
What happened:
On Sept. 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 editorial
cartoons by various artists that depicted the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. The paper
said it was part of a debate on self-censorship as it relates to Islam. (Earlier in the
month the paper had described an unsuccessful attempt by a writer to find an artist
willing to illustrate his book on Muhammad. The artists cited fear of reprisals and
previous attacks on others for offending Muslims.)
Jyllands-Posten’s decision to publish the cartoons – and the reprinting of them in
dozens of other newspapers – led to sometimes violent protests across the Muslim
world and at least 50 deaths. Protesters set fire to Danish embassies and burned flags.
Death threats were made against the cartoonists and their editor. Hundreds of Danish
websites were hacked. Supporters of the paper started a “Buy Danish” campaign in a
show of solidarity.
Fewer than three dozen newspapers in the United States reprinted the cartoons – and
many of those were college papers. The largest, most well-known papers to run the
images were the Rocky Mountain News and The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Rocky
Mountain News. They each ran one.
Around the world several editors were fired or/and arrested by government officials for
reprinting the cartoons. Several newspapers were forced to close. In South Africa,
courts pre-emptively forbade publication of Muhammad cartoons.
When Jyllands-Posten posted the 12 cartoons, it carried this explanation from
Flemming Rose, the newspaper’s cultural editor:
“The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a
special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings.
It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where
you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not
always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings
should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present
context. ... We are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the
self-censorship will end.”
Rose told a Newseum Institute program: “It was not a conscious attempt to offend a lot
of people just for the sake of showing that we have free speech in Denmark. It was a
classical journalistic project.”
Ten years later, Jyllands-Posten bowed to the threat of violence by becoming the only
major Danish newspaper not to republish "Charlie Hebdo" cartoons after the attack on
their Paris office.
“It shows that violence works,’’ the newspaper said in an editorial.
ETHICS CASE STUDY