時報應(yīng)該刊登《查理周報》新封面

With New Charlie Hebdo Cover, News Value Should Have Prevailed

時報應(yīng)該刊登《查理周報》新封面

Readers responded passionately, and in large numbers, to my post last week about The Times’s decision not to publish the now-famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. (In fact, I’ve never had more comments on a post or column.)

我上周發(fā)表了一篇文章，談到《紐約時報》決定不刊登現(xiàn)在舉世聞名的《查理周報》制作的先知穆罕默德漫畫，眾多讀者對這篇文章予以了熱切回應(yīng)。(實際上，這是我的專欄或者文章中收獲評論最多的一篇。)

A vast majority of readers were critical of The Times’s decision, feeling strongly that both because of news value and in order to reinforce free speech and show solidarity with a publication under attack, The Times should have published them.

絕大多數(shù)讀者都批評了時報的決定，強(qiáng)烈表示不管是從新聞價值來說，還是從支持言論自由，聲援遇襲出版物的角度來說，《紐約時報》都應(yīng)該刊登。

Just Monday, a new decision came along and The Times stayed with its earlier determination, showing no image of the new cover of Charlie Hebdo, which features a tearful Muhammad, holding a “Je Suis Charlie” sign, with a tagline that says “All is forgiven.” Instead, a Times article described the cover image and linked to an article that showed the cover illustration.

就在周一，新的決定出臺了，時報決定堅持先前的決定，不刊登《查理周報》新一期的封面。那張圖是含淚的穆罕默德舉著一塊“我是查理”的牌子，還有“一切皆被寬恕”的字樣。時報在文章中描述了這張封面，并提供了一個可以看到圖片的鏈接。

But that’s of little help to the print readers, who — if their only news source was The Times — could have gone through this whole tumultuous week without much sense of what the offending cartoons look like. That does them a disservice.

但是，這對印刷版讀者沒有什么幫助——如果他們唯一的新聞來源就是時報。他們在這動蕩不安的整個一周中，可能對挑釁性的漫畫是什么樣子缺乏概念。這不利于他們了解真相。

I can understand why The Times would not have published “the most incendiary images,” as the executive editor, Dean Baquet, described them last week. He felt those extreme cartoons would not have been necessary to illustrate the story about the terrorist attack that killed eight members of the satirical newspaper’s staff. (The Times did publish a number of Charlie Hebdo cartoons, but none that pictured Muhammad; in addition, a short documentary video, published by the opinion side in The Times last week, showed the cartoons.)

我可以理解時報為什么不刊登“非常具有煽動性的圖片”，這是主編迪恩·巴奎(Dean Baquet)上周對這些圖片的形容。他覺得，要報道這家諷刺報紙的八名員工在恐怖襲擊中喪生的事件，并不是非刊登這些極端的漫畫不可。(時報刊登過《查理周報》的很多漫畫，但沒有任何一張含有穆罕默德的形象;另外，時報在上周的觀點(diǎn)欄目中貼出了紀(jì)錄短片視頻，其中可以看到這些漫畫的樣子。)

Mr. Baquet made a tough call, which included safety concerns for Times staff, especially those in international posts. (Those concerns are far from frivolous; just days ago, a German newspaper’s office was firebombed after it published the cartoons following the attack, and now new concerns have arisen about reprisals.)

巴奎先生做了一個艱難的選擇，其中不乏對時報工作人員人身安全的考慮，尤其是那些在其他國家工作的員工。(這絕不是杞人憂天;幾天前，有人把燃燒彈扔到了一家德國報紙的辦公室，因為他們在巴黎襲擊案之后刊出了這些漫畫，現(xiàn)在又有了擔(dān)心被報復(fù)的新顧慮。)

I certainly don’t think that decision was “cowardly,” as many have charged. Mr. Baquet told me repeatedly in recent days that he was paying attention to reader comments on last week’s blog post, and that he found them thoughtful and, in many cases, eloquent. He also passed along to me examples of correspondence from readers who thanked him for The Times’s restraint and sensitivity last week.

很多人指責(zé)這個決定很“懦弱”，當(dāng)然我不這么認(rèn)為。巴奎最近幾天屢次對我說，他在留意讀者對上周那篇文章的評論，他覺得這些評論很認(rèn)真，其中很多都很有說服力。他還轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)給我?guī)追葑x者來信，對于時報在上周表現(xiàn)出的克制和體諒，這些讀者向他表示了感謝。

In my post last week, I called for a review of The Times’s standards, which Mr. Baquet told me were the basis for not publishing any examples of the Muhammad cartoons. One question, surely, is whether guidelines on offensive images are applied rigorously across the board; many readers have doubted this. Another is at what point news judgment ought to trump the likelihood of offending some readers.

在上周的文章中，我呼吁重新審視時報的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，巴奎先生告訴我，那正是不刊登任何穆罕默德漫畫范例的依據(jù)。這其中當(dāng)然有一個問題，刊登冒犯他人的圖片所遵循的原則，在應(yīng)用中是否嚴(yán)格執(zhí)行，一視同仁;很多讀者對此有所質(zhì)疑。另一個問題是，在什么情形下，新聞評判應(yīng)該優(yōu)先于冒犯某些讀者的可能性。

I asked Mr. Baquet on Tuesday if he had considered changing course — as some media organizations did, including The Wall Street Journal and the news pages of the The Washington Post — in order to publish the image of the new edition’s cover. He told me that he had thought about it but decided against it, in keeping with his original thinking.

我在周二問巴奎先生是否考慮過改變這一路線——一些新聞機(jī)構(gòu)已經(jīng)這樣做了，包括《華爾街日報》(The Wall Street Journal)和《華盛頓郵報》(The Washington Post)新聞版——從而可以刊登新一期的封面圖片。他告訴我，他考慮過，但決定不這樣做，堅持原來的想法。

Here’s my take: The new cover image of Charlie Hebdo is an important part of a story that has gripped the world’s attention over the past week.

我的看法是這樣：《查理周報》新一期封面圖片，是上周吸引了全世界矚目的一個故事的重要組成部分。