UK threatens to cut aid over gay rights

[SamuelRSmith]

NKAJ said:

I agree with all of it apart from the last part. People are offended by everything, if they don't like it they don't have to read it. It pisses me off when people find something offensive so they go and use violence to prove their point. If anything, all they are doing is strengthening the case for those who hate islam and say that it is a religion of violence. Even better is when these protesters are trying to argue that islam is a religion of peace and then go ballistic over a cartoon, creating violence ...

I know that sometimes it's pointless to publish something which you know will probably be offensive, but unfortunately there will always be some who choose to do so. All the massive hysteria over the Danish cartoons achieved was more negative attitudes towards muslims, even though it was just a militant minority who caused the trouble.

I agree with you 100%. My point wasn't about whether or not papers should be able to print whatever, my point was that papers are still free to print it, they just choose not to. The other poster said "Freedom of press only applies when you dont put a picture of muhammad in the paper, does it?" I'm saying that Freedom of Press still applies, I just explained why they choose not to.

Self-censorship happens all the time in the media, the images of Muhammad is just one example that people are more aware about. Another one I can think of is water-boarding in American newspapers.  When certain papers talk about China waterboarding people, they use the word "torture", however, when they talk about the USA being engaged in waterboarding, they use the term "enhanced interrogation". This isn't because the US Government has made some kind of rule, the press are still free to call it torture, if they wish. They just engage in self-censorship, because they know that calling American water-boarding torture will be offensive to many readers (those who may have lost loved ones in terrorist attacks, or at war, etc).

One other example, off the top of my head, is how the Japanese media refuse to have any negative coverage of the sumo sport. Any allegation of corruption or cheating is completely ignored in the Japanese media, because they know that it could be very offensive to Japanese readers, as sumo is seen as "pure" in Japanese culture.