New ‘Charlie Hebdo’ editor scolds Chuck Todd: When you blur our cover, ‘you blur out democracy’ [View all]

[Ferd Berfel]

Hear, Hear!



http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/01/new-charlie-hebdo-editor-scolds-us-press-when-you-blur-our-cover-you-blur-out-democracy/

On Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press, Charlie Hebdo‘s new editor-in-chief admonished American media outlets for blurring the cover of this week’s issue of the controversial satirical magazine.

After recounting what it has been like for the magazine’s editorial staff in the days and weeks since the attack, Gerard Briard was asked by Chuck Todd about the Pope’s statement that “you cannot provoke, you cannot insult other people’s faith, you cannot mock it,” and that “freedom of speech is a right and a duty that must be displayed without offending.”

“Every time we draw a cartoon of Muḥammad,” Briard replied, “every time we draw a cartoon of the prophet, every time we draw a cartoon of God, we defend the freedom of religion. We declare that God must not be a political public figure, but that he must be a private figure.”

(snip)


“What they must understand,” Briard continued, “is that when they blur it out — when they decline to publish it — they blur out democracy, secularism, freedom of religion, and they insult the citizenship.”