To conflate/confuse Page 3 and Charlie Hebdo?

[Babycham1979]

AIBU to think that there's a major irony in that many of the people vocally celebrating the end of Page 3 are the same that were cynically claiming 'Je suis Charlie' last week?

Surely it's the height of hypocrisy to claim in one breath that Charlie Hebdo should be allowed to publish Mo cartoons, but that the Sun shouldn't be allowed to publish Page 3? What about freedom of speech; the right to offend; pluralism; Enlightenment values and everything else the same people were banging on about last week?

For what it's worth I support Charlie Hebdo's stance, and I think Page 3 is a tawdry, mildly-sexist anachronism. However, I see a logical inconsistency here!

Is it (yet another) case of the likes of Harman only representing the views and interests of bourgeois European women?

I read somewhere that some of the stuff Charlie Hebdo printed would not even be legal in Britain anyway, as it would be considered racist. Not sure how true that is.

Are we going to say that these people who preach about jihad and incite terrorism are going to be allowed freedom of speech? We're really not are we?

The Sun online is behind a paywall, so P.3 online is less of an issue.

Ask anyone what's the first thing that comes to mind when you mention The Sun and 99 out of 100 will say 'page three.' So if you sign up to Sun online then you're signing up for tits.

If covering up the front pages of porn magazine and not displaying them at eye level for children, censorship?

Because that was the issue here. Objectified naked young women being passed off as 'news'. People enjoying looking at naked women in a sexual way, while sat on the train or bus. And it being legitimised because it was in a newspaper, rather than a porn magazine.

Not the same.

Oh. I must have missed the bit about women breaking into The Sun's offices and shooting 12 people dead.

CH got to publish their magazine and anyone who was offended by it had the right to seek legal redress in the French Courts (which they did) and protest and run campaigns against it and boycott it etc.

The Sun was able to print a picture of a half naked woman everyday, it was legal to do so, those of us who were offended had the right to protest and run campaigns and boycott it etc.

No difference - except that one group that took offence decided that people deserved to die for offending them.

I read somewhere that some of the stuff Charlie Hebdo printed would not even be legal in Britain anyway, as it would be considered racist. Not sure how true that is

Was it this in Spiked that you read TinklyLittleLaugh?

Apologies if not.

That may well have happened and Spiked are entitled to their view but nothing that Charlie Hebdo published would have been considered illegal in Britain and Spiked knew it.

They also know that they can say what they want to without being prosecuted.

Which is hypocritical.

France and Britain just have different traditions. In fact, France has stricter laws on privacy than Britain does. But we are basically the same.

Perhaps Spiked would like to talk about that.

both rags should be free to print what they want

they are. The nmp3 campaign was aimed at trying to persuade the editor of The Sun to willingly withdraw topless models from page 3, which appears to be what has happened. A ban was never sought.

With freedom of speech comes responsibility .

Removing page three was a commercial decision, nothing more, nothing less. The Sun have even said they'll reinstate it if sales drop as a result.

The irony with CH is that the murders that took place may well have saved the publication. As I understand it CH was possibly facing bankruptcy before the shootings.

Jesus I knew there would be a thread like this when I saw the news about P3. People proclaiming the Je suis Charlie line were not necessarily saying that CH were right to print the cartoons or that they agreed with it. What they were saying was that they had THE right to do it and that right should be protected and people should not be murdered for it. No one would have objected had those offended by CH partook in peaceful protest or legal challenges. This is exactly what happened with P3. The paper still has the right to publish if they want but in response to peaceful and legitimate campaigning they have taken the decision not to. Surely this distinction is not to complicated to understand. Put another way I'd some radical feminists had gone in and shot 12 people in the Sun offices I would be declaring 'I am the Sun' (I like the sound of that actually) just as comfortably as I did Je suis Charlie. In both incidents I found what they published distasteful, but I defend the right for it to be published in a democratic society with out violent reaction.

Have The Sun said they'll reinstate it if sales drop? I thought they had made no comment at all

I've never seen spiked before Limited. Honestly can't remember where I read it was illegal, may have been the Beeb, (who didn't reprint any of the cartoons).

Interesting what Lay writes. I do think many people are confusing Charlie Hebdo's right to print what they like, with the suggestion that what they printed was perfectly fine.

Its not whether or not they are allowed to publish but people's methods of objecting to the the publication. Signing a petition or emailing Rupert Murdoch is not comparable with shooting people.

diddle and laymedown are right.

There was a campaign to ask the editor of the Sun to change their policy. It's not really about freedom of speech (leaving aside the fact that photographs and words are not the same thing anyway), it's about editorial policy.

Newspapers make decisions all the time about what to publish and not to publish. For example, if you sent an article to the Sun about how great the Labour Party was, do you think they'd publish it? The answer's no - not because they're self-censoring but because it's not within their editorial remit.

Of course, we don't have 'true' freedom of speech. British defamation laws are particularly nasty. However, the principle remains, and I'm keen to highlight the hypocrisy of those who drape themselves in the shroud of liberty when it suits them, and then demand draconian control/censorship when it doesn't. I think that counts as having your cake and eating it.

Vienna, 'With freedom of speech come responsibility'? Those are the kind of weasel words dished out by tin-pot dictators. Much like, 'if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear'.

Anti Page 3 campaigners started a petition. The Sun made a commercial decision to drop it. No one banned them from publishing. No one murdered them.

"I'm keen to highlight the hypocrisy of those who drape themselves in the shroud of liberty when it suits them, and then demand draconian control/censorship when it doesn't."

Are you really? Who's demanding draconian control or censorship?

Hang on a sec....

Muslims with an objection to the Charlie cartoons have always had, and will always have, the right to raise that objection and campaign if they want to. The publishers have had an equal right to ignore and continue publishing.

Anyone with an objection to tits on page 3 has always had the right to object and campaign - which they have. The Sun have the right to ignore and to continue publishing. In this case they have apparently decided to stop.

The only difference between the Sun and CH is that in one case objectors peacefully petitioned and in another they armed themselves with guns.

If you're suggesting that people who support the right of CH to publish but are anti page 3 are hypocrites then - well, maybe. But it's an excusable hypocrisy because we are all multi-faceted....like somethings, don't like others. We all do that

Although I think it's worth bearing in mind the whole "where's the harm?" issue.

Cartoons about someone who has been dead for 1400 years hurts precisely no one. People's "feelings" on the matter are their business.

Parading young, half naked women in a newspaper on a daily basis as wank fodder is quite damaging to women in many measurable ways...which shouldn't need to be explained to anyone in this website.

And there are dozens of magazines in the UK that publish topless or fully naked pictures of women. No one murders the photographers.

*ILovePud

Satire is there to lampoon and challenge the powerful, page three just feeds into the culture of power imbalance between genders.*

One of the more powerful criticisms I've seen of Charlie Hebdo is that, taken as a whole and in the context of French culture, its anti-Muslim cartoons have targetted and lampooned a minority which has received a lot of mistreatment.

Obviously the attack was an awful thing but one thing that has worried me in the aftermath is the fact that an attack carried out by a few people is being treated as justification for lampooning (and deliberately offending members of) an entire religion. No one should be harmed for practising free speech, but I don't think all exercises in free speech necessarily have content that should be supported, and I'm really ambivalent as to whether I support the content and implication of a lot of the CH cartoons I've seen. To me it is doing something very similar to the Sun - targetting a group that is at a disadvantage already.

I found both of these responses very thought-provoking:

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2015/jan/09/joe-sacco-on-satire-a-response-to-the-attacks

www.vox.com/2015/1/12/7518349/charlie-hebdo-racist

Babycham. I am terribly sorry.

demand draconian control/censorship Who's a what now? Asking someone to remove something because you think it's damaging is not censorship. Any more than people asking Lego to stop making everything pink and shitty is censorship. It is just requesting that people act like grown-up people with brains rather than Neanderthals, dragging their knuckles over the savannah. And yes I know Neanderthals were actually not like that.

Just because I can go around telling people they are cunts, doesn't mean I should and someone is perfectly within their rights to ask me not to. They can't shoot me though.

Tinkly, are you referring to the possibility that some of their content would breach our hate speech laws? I read the same. Ironic really, as religion is currently protected from the same rules; the Koran and much of the Bible are easily in breach of those laws with regard to women, gays, apostates etc etc. If some of the raving Islamists do get their way, and we are prevented from offending the religious, I wonder if the same laws would/could be extended to such theologically-based hate speech?

Even more ironic (and hypocritical) is that Holocaust denial is illegal in France. Surely, this is no more or less 'offensive' than Mo cartoons to different 'communities'?

I think Hebdo has every right to print the cartoons. However, I do think it's scary to look at the parallels with 1930s Europe and Jews. Still, I don't think censorship is ever the way to defeat extremists.

No one should be murdered for publishing either.

No one should be prosecuted for publishing either.

No one should be forced to buy either.

Is there a problem?