"know thy bedfellow"

the following reprints a comment by judd, in reddish, to a previous post of mine and to one by nacho (in blue and ital).

One point here is that there really isn't a controversy. No one is publicly saying "the cartoons are great" or "the response to the cartoons was measured and reasonable." With that in mind, I agree with Andrea that the cartoons themselves are not the issue, here. With their reaction, militant Muslims shifted the issue onto themselves and away from the objects to which they were responding - a point that you made, Nacho (by saying that you would have condemned the cartoons, too, before the bigger fish appeared).

And so, like you say, this is the question:

And why did they decide to self-censor such a vital element of this story? Because they were intimidated by the violent reaction of radical elements opposed to free expression. They decided that informing their readers was less important than keeping the peace and, in that sense, they clearly demonstrated to these radical elements that they can achieve some of their objectives through violence.

You asked if I believe that the Times was supporting violence by not showing the cartoons. Is rewarding violence the same thing as supporting it? Maybe not, but its way too close for me.

One question here is how often the Times actually shows the objects of their analysis. When a report comes about about a key news issue, you'll sometimes see an excerpt in the paper (they print excerpts from the Supreme Court rulings, for example). In articles about artists, they will certainly sometimes show examples of their art. Presidential speeches are often quoted, in part.

It doesn't seem like showing things like the cartoons, however, is in any way the norm. Normally, something like that would be described, which is how the Times handled it. For the paper to print the cartoons would have been exceptional, based on their precedent.

In other words, the default position was to not print the cartoons. That's a huge distinction to make, between the two possible defaults. If the default is to print, and they don't because of the violence, then maybe I agree with your point. But it would have felt unusual for the paper to do that, and would have read (to me) like them doing that specifically to show strength, solidarity, etc.

Furthermore, I agree with Andrea that this whole thing is just an excuse for O'Reilly & Co. to excoriate the Left, especially the "leftist media". (Ha.) You can work backwards to make a reasonable argument - and you do, Nacho - but it seems to be missing the point. As much as you might not personally be coming from the sort of tribalistic, "our team", solidarity-based arguments that I was putting forward as the backbone of that perspective, I firmly believe that the difference to the right-wing media and their acolytes between "not going out of your way to show militant Muslims that they can't win" and self-censorship is small, if it exists at all. After all, you are either with us or against us. Those are the choices. That doesn't argue against your making a rational argument for the perspective, loosely defined, but know thy bedfellow and recognize that what I'm describing is a large part of the "side" that you're on.