Thursday, January 08, 2015 Subject: AJ coverage of events in Paris Dear Editorial colleagues, Please accept this note in the spirit it is intended â to make our coverage the best that it can be âŠ. We are Al Jazeera!!!! My suggestion is that we question and raise the following points in our coverage â studio/anchors/guests/correspondents: This was a targeted attack, not a broad attack on the french population a la Twin towers or 7/7 style. So who was this attack against? The whole of France/EU society? Or specifically this magazine. The difference lies in how this is reported not in how terrible the act is obviously â murder is murder either way⊠but poses a narrower question of the âwhyâ? attack on french society and values? Only if you consider CHâs racist caricatures to be the best of European intellectual production (total whitewash on that at the moment) Was this really an attack on âFree speechâ? Who is attacking free speech here exactly? Does an attack by 2-3 guys on a controversial magazine equate to a civilizational attack on European values..? Really? âI am Charlieâ as an alienating slogan â with us or against us type of statement â one can be anti-CHâs racism and ALSO against murdering people(!) (obvious I know but worth stating) Also worth stating that we still donât know much about the motivations of the attackers outside of the few words overheard on the video. Yes, clearly it was a âpunishmentâ for the cartoons, but it didnât take them 8/9 years to prep this attack (2006 was Danish/CH publication) â this is perhaps a response to something more immediateâŠFrench action against ISILâŠ? Mali? Libya? CH just the target ie focus of the attack..? Danger in making this a free speech aka âEuropean Valuesâ under attack binary is that it once again constructs European identity in opposition to Islam (sacred depictions) and cements the notion of a European identity under threat from an Islamic retrograde culture of which the attackers are merely the violent tip of the iceberg (see the seeping of Far Right discourse into french normalcy with Houellebecqueâs novel for example) The key is to look at the biographies of these guys â contrary to conventional wisdom, they were radicalised by images of Abu Ghraib not by images of the Prophet Mohammed You donât actually stick it to the terrorists by insulting the majority of Muslims by reproducing more cartoons â you actually entrench the very animosity and divisions these guys seek to sow. This is a clash of extremist fringes⊠I suggest a re-read of the Time magazine article back from 2011 and I have selected the most poignant/important excerptâŠ. world.time/2011/11/02/firebombed-french-paper-a-victim-of-islamistsor-its-own-obnoxious-islamophobia/?iid=gs-article-mostpop1world.time/2011/11/02/firebombed-french-paper-a-victim-of-islamistsor-its-own-obnoxious-islamophobia/?iid=gs-article-mostpop1 Itâs unclear what the objectives of the caricatures were other than to offend Muslimsâand provoke hysteria among extremists. Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isnât bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent responseâhowever illegitimateâis a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: itâs pointlessly all about you. Kind regards Salah-Aldeen Khadr Executive Producer Al Jazeera English U.S.-based correspondent Tom Ackerman: Friday, January 9, 2015 Subject: RE: AJ coverage of events in Paris If a large enough group of someone is willing to kill you for saying something, then itâs something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isnât really a liberal civilization any moreâŠ.liberalism doesnât depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and itâs okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, thatâs when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed. -Ross Douthat in the NY Times Doha-based correspondent Mohamed Vall Salem: Friday, January 9, 2015 Subject: RE: AJ coverage of events in Paris âlarge enough groupâ? Friday, January 9, 2015 Subject: RE: AJ coverage of events in Paris Rejoinder, I guess if you insult 1.5 billion people chances are one or two of them will kill you⊠they donât represent the 1.5 who swallowed the insult in silence and patience in the name of free speech. And I guess if you encourage people to go on insulting 1.5 billion people about their most sacred icons then you just want more killings because as I said in 1.5 billion there will remain some fools who donât abide by the laws or know about free speech. Simply put, itâs difficult to control and tame and brake down or otherwise punish or educate all those 1.5 billion people. Isnât it simply wiser to respect peoplesâ sacred values and sacred icons? Respect breeds respect, insult can degenerate into something worse than just insult, depending who whoâs at the the receiving end. Last, if you no longer have anything that you hold sacred (the death of religion and the death of God etcâŠ), there 1.5 billion people who still have ⊠donât ignore their values in the name of yours, because values are a cultural construct, they vary from age to age and from culture to culture ⊠Last, last: what Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech it was an abuse of free speech in my opinion, go back to the cartoons and have a look at them! Itâ snot about what the drawing said, it was about how they said it. I condemn those heinous killings, but IâM NOT CHARLIE Mohamed Vall Senior Paris correspondent Jacky Rowland: Friday, January 9, 2015 Subject: RE: AJ coverage of events in Paris Dear all We are Aljazeera. So, a polite reminder: #journalismisnotacrime Kind regards Jacky Jacky Rowland Senior Correspondent, Paris Aljazeera English Roving reporter Omar Al Saleh: Friday, January 9, 2015 Subject: RE: AJ coverage of events in Paris First i condemn the brutal killing. But I AM NOT CHARLIE.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 10:23:24 +0000
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