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Comment by vph | Hacker News Reader

Those cartoons are offensive to a group of religious people. The cartoonists had the right to freely express themselves. All of us should defend their right to express their opinions, but we don't have to agree with them and popularize something we disagree with. I think the NYT, CNN, Fox News, etc. made the right decision not showing these offensive images.

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It's definitely their decision but here is my thought:

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?

It's the same as with not showing photos from ISIS with the heads being cut off.

Or not showing naked leaked photos of Jennifer Lawrence.

And while I am at it

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.

No, I don't think it would be "good journalism," it'd be "sensationalist journalism."

Nobody gets upset when they replace the word "nigger" with the phrase "the 'N' word", so why get upset over this?

I think it is the situation:

"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).

You can describe what the images contained without showing them...

Yes but the images are really relevant to this news story and I think showing them is probably the best way to convey the content.

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.

As I said before

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.

That's different. The leaked photos aren't central to the story. It's like a piece of art causing a huge amount of controversy. The media outlets certainly don't condone the images but I think it is critical to the story.

Every news site explains they were images ridiculing Muhammad. If that's not enough, you can Google "Charlie Hebdo Muhammad".

They don't publish sample pictures alongside stories of child porn arrests, either. They self censor things like this all the time.

Well, that's part of the freedom of speech.

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

Sure, and they could, and nothing (legal) would happen to them. Thus freedom of speech is preserved. They also however, have the freedom to choose NOT to share these images, which is what they have done here.

Much like I have the right to tell someone they are ugly. I find people like me better though when I exercise some restraint.

Sure, and you also have the freedom to not opt for the pat-down at the airport and go for the scanner...

You can say them. You could chose not to say them for the same reason you chose not print anti-semitic cartoons or similar.

Freedom of speech is about governments restricting what citizens can say, and that hasn't happened here.

While the definition of freedom of speech is certainly government related, it is also influenced by external retaliation possibilities.

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

No, freedom of speech is about not restricting what people dare to say - it doesn't matter if it's the government or the terrorists that restrict it.

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