Posted by
on Thursday, March 22, 2007 12:10:28 PM
I never thought I would be saying "three cheers for France," but I am this morning as word has come down that the editor of a French satirical paper, on trial for his supposed "Islamophobia," has been found not guilty. Allah @ Hot Air has the scoop, and CNN has the skinny:
A French court on Thursday ruled in favor of a satirical weekly that had printed cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, rejecting accusations by Islamic groups who said the publication incited hatred against Muslims.
The court said the cartoons published by the weekly Charlie Hebdo were covered by freedom of expression laws and did not constitute an attack on Islam in general but fundamentalists.
The cartoons, originally published in 2005 by a Danish daily, provoked violent protests in Asia, Africa and the Middle East that left 50 people dead. Several European publications reprinted them as an affirmation of free speech.
The public prosecutor had argued the cartoons were protected by freedom of speech and recommended that the case be dismissed.
With France's presidential election only a month away, the court case has been overshadowed by election politics. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, the conservative frontrunner, his centrist rival Francois Bayrou and Socialist party leader Francois Hollande have all spoken out in defense of the weekly.
Denis Prager discussed this story yesterday ion the last hour of his show. He pointed out that there were quite a few papers across Europe that were willing to print the Mohammed cartoons that sparked outrage among militant Muslims around the world, but not one US outlet wanted to do that. Not the New York Times. Not the Boston Globe. Not the LA Times or the WaPo. The alternative media reprinted them over and over again. Michelle Malkin actually led that charge, which included a "blogburst" of unparalleled proportions.
French Muslims were outraged over the cartoon published by the editor of Charlie Hebdo, and demanded he be put on trial. Accroding to the Wall Street Jopurnal piece in yesterday's edition (cited by Mr. Prager but I am unable to locate it online), Chirac had a hand in bringing this case to trial. Luckily, for free speech rights and freedom of the press rights, he was dealt another blow today.
As Mr. Prager pointed out yesterday, the press abroad is far more courageous tham the ones here in America. They took the risk to publish those cartoons because the furor that erupted over them was news. NEWS! I wonder if the MSM over here understands what that word means? They spent how long on the Ann Nicole Smith story while real news was being reported by the alternative media? They spent day after day breathelessly reporting on whether Brittney Spears was in or out of rehab. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not "news" that they should be covering. Let the gossip hacks take care of that. Let Oprah, and the windbag Rosie deal with those stories. The MSM's job is to cover the real news. But all too often they take the tabloid route rather than the right path of objectively reporting news and events throughout the day. Maybe they think they can play it safe with that sort of reporting, but it does no service to the news consumer.
I applaud the court in France for handing down this decision. The moment any court is allowed to decide what is an is not "hate speech" (an uterrly retarded charge to begin with that should be struck from our lexicon in general) then you have let the genie out of the bottle and there will be NO WAY of putting it back.
Marcie
UPDATE: I located the WSJ article Marcie was searching for. It's right here if readers would like to see how ridiculous this whole mess was.
Publius II