The NY Press's editorial staff quit over the paper's decision not to publish the controversial Mohammed cartoon from the conservative Danish paper/tinderbox. The Politicker broke the news and printed editor-in-chief Harry Siegel's memo; here's part of it:
New York Press, like so many other publications, has suborned its own professed principles. For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editorJonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions...
We have no illusions about the power of the Press (NY Press, we mean), but even on the far margins of the world-historical stage, we are not willing to side with the enemies of the values we hold dear, a free press not least among them.
It's is pretty shocking that not even the NYC tabloids haven't published the cartoons - they're always looking for something to incite insanity. We wonder if the State Department has been issuing secret warnings to management at media outlets. President Bush, in his remarks with Jordan's King Abdullah, said this morning that he (and America) believes in free press. The NY Times' Michael Kimmelman had an interesting essay about how the cartoon inspired this violence, and reminds us about Rudy Giuliani's furor over the Chris Ofili "Virgin Mary" painting that incorporated elephant dung.
