A news story just broke in which people were killed because of certain images. Is it not good journalism to show the images that caused the attack?
Or not showing naked leaked photos of Jennifer Lawrence.
Copyright is directly against "absolute freedom of speech"
I can't go and print the latest Game of Thrones book and claim "freedom of speech". We do have actual laws that prevent us to print something.
Nobody gets upset when they replace the word "nigger" with the phrase "the 'N' word", so why get upset over this?
"He was shot because he called him the N word" vs "He was shot because he published these images".
I understand the former pretty easily but the latter I'd want to know what the images contained (especially from a news organization).
They don't publish sample pictures alongside stories of child porn arrests, either. They self censor things like this all the time.
Do you think they should show Jennifer Lawrence leaked photos just because it's part of the news story about iCloud breach? I don't think so.
I don't agree with the images (and I think they are in bad taste) but I'd expect a news organization to report it impartially.
If you can't say things that will offend people YOU DON'T HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH
It's that simple
And I'd MUCH rather live in a world where we can offend Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Cientologists, etc
Much like I have the right to tell someone they are ugly. I find people like me better though when I exercise some restraint.
Freedom of speech is about governments restricting what citizens can say, and that hasn't happened here.
And in a modern society those retaliations should be strictly legal in nature (which unfortunately is often restrictive, but ok, it's part of the game)
Edit: wording
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/solidarity-cha...
Questioning themselves over their own standards, the executive editor says “We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these are gratuitous insult.”
“At what point does news value override our standards?”
Yet, as others have already pointed out, the NY Times has been willing to publish inflammatory images in the past. Cartoons accusing Jews of fabricating the Holocaust, racist caricatures of African-Americans and Asians, anti-semitic illustrations and obscene homophobic protests, all "gratuitous insult," and all finding their way onto the pages of the Times:
http://gawker.com/7-offensive-images-the-new-york-times-wasn...
I understand the Times' desire to keep its staff safe from harm, and safe from the kind of violent reprisals that might occur if the cartoons were printed. But it's disingenuous to pretend that the decision was made based on the paper's standards, as opposed to fear of the consequences.
I honestly find it quite surprising that most of the US media bowed to the demands of the terrorists, since the US is normally considered a bastion of free speech.
Claim: We need something analogous to "fence the out" for "being offended" if we want to construct a broadly participatory society, complete with free, open, and vibrant debate. In other words, perhaps our society should standardize on the convention that it is your job to not be offended by things, instead of other peoples' job to not offend you. Perhaps this might boil down to civilly agreeing to disagree.
Given a large number of religious/ideological groups and a larger number of issues with non-negligible probabilities of offending someone, it becomes likely that many statements in the public discourse will be offensive to someone.
We can model the situation binomially and compute the likelihood of at least one success (offending some group) in N trials, where N is the number of events in the public discourse per day (perhaps 10^5 in today's fractured media landscape) and the probability of offense is on average perhaps 1/(.001N). It's not hard to see that at least one success will probably happen every day. That's why I think we need a more robust system for dealing with this.
Just because most people won't go on a shooting rampage over them doesn't mean the images aren't offensive to some people. No point throwing fuel on the fire.
If you want to see offensive cartoons there are plenty of websites just a google search away.
It's funny how many stories are posted on HN about being sensitive to women/minorities/whatever, with comments full of people saying how open and accepting people need to be, then this comes up, and the dominant theme is "We need to publish offensive stuff everywhere, because fuck that group who's different than me."
It's funny how many stories are posted on HN about being sensitive to women/minorities/whatever, with comments full of people saying how open and accepting people need to be, then this comes up, and the dominant theme is "We need to publish offensive stuff everywhere, because fuck that group who's different than me." > No, fuck the group that uses terrorism to shut people up. It should be way more offensive to bow to the demands of the terrorists than to post some cartoons.
Let's test your free speech ideals.
Besides, given that most Americans wouldn't even know what kind of cartoons we're talking about, it would have actual news value to show them.
Pretty soon they'll start insisting that women should not sit next to them in a public bus because they find it offensive.
Give then an inch, they ask for a mile!
I'm really serious about this.
I'm not sure that the political sensibilities of Charlie Hedbo or the content will really resonate with Americans, though the content may do better among other Anglophones.
Otherwise, we might just as well move to Saudi Arabia, or back to centuries long past.
Is that the final motivation?
It's also problematic to worry about the consequences of speech like that. What happens when people start warning you that publishing the truth will drive them to extremism? Of course publishers should consider how their speech will impact people, but they should not refrain from publishing just because they see potential for a negative impact.
The use of the word extremism is not ideal here. One can hold extreme views on the subject and still function normally within a society, provided he or she respects societal views and voices disagreement within societal norms. Terrorists resort to terror and violence to voice disagreement.
In western societies personal freedoms are valued higher than a given religion. Islam does not value personal freedoms in the same way, but if Islam is to peacefully fit in with western norms, it has to adapt or continuous conflict is inevitable.
That's the final motivation. It's also called free speech.
Anyone can be offended by anything. As an atheist I'm offended so many people choose to believe in a man-made fantasy. But hey, I'm not going to kill them, jail them,or what not. I expect the same in return. You can certainly disagree or make cartoons about atheists tho. I might find them funny or be offended, who cares.