The Daily Mail recently posted a story about the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo’s new comic book life of Muhammad; they illustrated the story with a photo of a man standing in front of the Charlie Hebdo offices after Islamic jihadists had firebombed them. The man is holding one of the earlier issues of the paper that featured cartoons of Muhammad, but the Daily Mail pixelated out the images.
This is the suicide of the free press. The Daily Mail is generally better than the other papers in Britain in covering the jihad threat, but it is also careless, sensationalistic, and -- as this proves -- execrably cowardly. The Daily Mail is hereby signaling that violent intimidation works, and that all you have to do to get the West’s vaunted “free press” to cower before you and give up its freedom is lob a few bombs, kill a few innocents, make a few threats.
The proper response to violent intimidation is not for its victims to curtail their activities and to change their behavior. That only encourages the bullies. The proper response is to stand up to them, show them that they will not get their way, and do all one can to protect those whom they may harm. This would show the world that the West will not give up its principle of free speech, our foremost bulwark against tyranny, and will stand for our principles against attempts to intimidate us into enforcing Sharia blasphemy laws upon ourselves.
Instead, the Daily Mail, like so many others, capitulates. Among British papers, the Independent showed no greater courage, although the often-dhimmi Telegraph did -- albeit at a distance.
