Feb 8
Student editor shows spine…suffers for it
Hurrah, student journalists causing trouble. There’s not enough of that going on these days if you ask me. Anyway, the editor of Cardiff University’s student newspaper Gair Rhydd has been suspended after he became the first UK editor to publish one of those cartoons that have been causing rather a lot of outrage in parts of the global Islamic community.While certain newspapers around the world have republished the cartoons, which satirise Muhammad, since they originally appeared in a Danish newspaper, no publication in the UK has done so as yet – although the Beeb
flashed them up on screen while covering the protests against them last week. But that didn’t put off the students who run the Cardiff college paper, newspaper of the year at last year’s Guardian Student Media Awards, who decided to include one of the offending cartoons in their latest edition, which hit the campus last Saturday.Unfortunately the students’ union that funds the title was less keen to court controversy, and has subsequently withdrawn the paper and suspended its editor and three other student journalists. A spokesman for the union,
Tom Wellingham, told reporters: “The editorial team enjoy the normal freedoms and independence associated with the press in the UK, and are expected to exercise those freedoms with responsibility, due care and judgment. The students’ union very much regrets any upset caused or disrespect shown by the publication of the controversial cartoon and has taken immediate action by promptly withdrawing all copies of this week’s edition of Gair Rhydd at the earliest moment possible.”The union reckons all but a couple of hundred copies of the latest edition of the newspaper have now been withdrawn, and they will now be shredded.
Local councillor Joe Carter, whose constituency includes the University’s students’ union, told the icwales.co.uk website yesterday: “They were wise to pull it but I’m surprised they ran it in the first place. There’s a very strong argument about freedom of the press versus tolerance of religion. We have to have tolerance of people’s views and culture”.
This bit of abject cowardice comes via CMU. Good to see a student doing what the MSM in this country should have been doing for the last few weeks.
2 Comments so far
The Education Act (2) 1986 imposes a duty on universities in respect of freedom of speech.
Not only have they been spineless but probably acted illegally as well.
Get your complaints in.
Yes I agree… All the more that I could visualize the cartoons and there is not the least bit of a reason to condemn them !!! (although some are not very good humour, other s are very good are so true … )
See the original and Make you own opinions about the cartoons at :
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/698
Shutting our mouth with tap when confronted with threats and burned embassies is not a good reaction. It is starting a vicious circle and we know where it leads (I thought Mr Churchill had taught us Europeans that much).
Please , Mister Straw and other hasty contemptors of freedom of speech:
Yes, surely, supporting the cartons will probably lead to yet another outspur of barbary and terrorism (that is, the next target will be paris).
Yes, people will die because of it. (I myself leave in Paris)
But please, think, of how many people are dying every day in the name of Muhammad ! think of how women are treated in Islamic countries ! Do you expect your cowardice to encourage the development of Freedom and democracy in the Arab world ? How do you expect Islam as a whole (the famous billion people Kofi is talking of) to learn the respect of elementary human rights ?
Oh .. but all those victims are Muslims themselves, suffering dying far away from us… May be they are not so important in you eyes ?
If any of these contemptors want to know WHY these cartoons say nothing but the truth, please read Chahdortt Djavanns books. She is of Persian origin… she knows what she is talking about.
And please: Im NOT islamophopic. These cartoons expose the trend of OBSCURATISM that thrives now days over this religion. Exposing obscurantism is not without risks, but Islam needs to get rid of it before it become (again) a great religion and culture as a whole.