The NY Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, among other papers, published photos of "Piss Christ." At the time of the NEA controvery, their editorials denounced Christian fundamentalists. Today, they side with Islamist fundamentalists.
Here's Joel Brinkley's apologia in the New York Times:
Major American newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, did not publish the caricatures. Representatives said the story could be told effectively without publishing images that many would find offensive.Kudos to Brit Hume for showing the pictures on his Fox News show, shame on CNN for pixillating them. If I hadn't already cancelled my NY Times subscription a few years ago, I'd cancel it now.
"Readers were well served by a short story without publishing the cartoon," said Robert Christie, a spokesman for Dow Jones & Company, which owns The Wall Street Journal. "We didn't want to publish anything that can be perceived as inflammatory to our readers' culture when it didn't add anything to the story."
In a midafternoon meeting on Friday, editors at The Chicago Tribune discussed the issue but decided against publishing the cartoons. "We can communicate to our readers what this is about without running it," said James O'Shea, the paper's managing editor.
