After the recent massacre by Islamic terrorists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, people around the world took to social media to declare “Je suis Charlie,” or “I am Charlie.” Solidarity is a nice sentiment, and journalists in particular are fond of uttering self-soothing words about their commitment to free speech at times like this. But “Je suis Charlie” is just another lie that the media tell themselves. Charlie Hebdo’s willingness to defend free speech only serves as a reminder that the magazine was a rare bastion of courage in an industry dominated by cowards.
Indeed, many in the media are in such denial they insist their cowering is brave truth-telling aimed at silencing bigots. “I hereby apologize to Muslims for the wave of bigotry and simple nuttiness that has lately been directed at you. The venom on the airwaves, equating Muslims with terrorists, should embarrass us more than you,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof in a column on September 18, 2010. “Muslims are one of the last minorities in the United States that it is still possible to demean openly, and I apologize for the slurs.”
This simpering apologia was as unnecessary as it was untrue. It is not possible to demean Muslims openly. Among the many insulting things about Kristof’s column was its timing. On September 14, 2010—four days before the column ran—the Seattle Weekly had announced that its cartoonist, Molly Norris, had “gone ghost.” Earlier that year, Norris gained some prominence as the founder of Everybody Draw Muhammad Day, prompting none other than Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki to issue a fatwa calling for her murder. Norris is still in hiding more than four years later, and for good reason. After the Hebdo massacre, many news outlets noted that one of the much-beloved, now-murdered cartoonists, Stéphane Charbonnier, aka “Charb,” was recently listed by the al Qaeda magazine Inspire as “Wanted Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Islam.” Also listed, at the bottom of the page, is Molly Norris.
Few in the media have ever so much as noted that Norris was forced to disappear. The Washington Examiner, one of the few outlets that did notice, published an editorial condemning various media organizations for failing to speak out in her defense, including the Society for Professional Journalists. SPJ responded by privately emailing reporters across the country that the Examiner editorial was “misleading and was most likely written to gain headlines/SEO.” Fortunately, the Examiner editorial writer—who not coincidentally is also the Weekly Standard editorial writer you’re reading now—had recorded his conversation with SPJ’s spokesman. The transcript of that conversation made it abundantly clear who was doing the misleading.
This cowardice is bad enough. But what is beyond appalling is the fact that so many journalists are incapable of criticizing Muslim extremism without immediately offering up false equivalences with their preferred political targets. A few years back, Salon published this priceless headline: “What’s the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists? Lipstick.” More recently, in October, there was a minor kerfuffle when Bill Maher said on his HBO program, “[Islam is] the only religion that acts like the mafia, that will [expletive] kill you if you say the wrong thing, draw the wrong picture, or write the wrong book.” His guest, Ben Affleck, responded disapprovingly. “It’s gross, it’s racist, it’s disgusting,” he said. “It’s like saying, ‘Oh, you shifty Jew!’ ”
And right after the Hebdo massacre, Esquire’s Charles Pierce wrote, “We can all imagine in the abstract the reaction of the American right to a French (eek!) publication that ran cartoons of masturbating nuns and of the pope sporting a condom,” as Charlie Hebdo did. But this dumb hypothetical isn’t exactly unverifiable. The Associated Press, which as a matter of policy will not display Hebdo’s offensive cartoons, sold photo prints of Andres Serrano’s infamous “Piss Christ” on its website until it was forced to acknowledge its hypocrisy after the Hebdo slaughter. Yet not a single Christian shot up an AP newsroom.
We depend on a free press to check governments that would suppress speech, so the fact that the media have neutered themselves is harming free expression throughout the West. In Canada, journalists Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant have been dragged into legal proceedings and threatened with fines for criticizing Muslims. In the wake of a violent al Qaeda attack on a U.S. embassy, the U.S. government jailed the filmmaker behind an obscure YouTube video mocking Muhammad. And President Obama himself told the United Nations, “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Let us be clear, then, in our own response: Perhaps the future shouldn’t belong to those who slander Muhammad, but it damn well better belong to people who insist on the right to do so.
