Channel 4 censorship

But we (or 'they') are giving way to those values, rosesarered. That's the problem.

How very sad.

I have a healthy fear of fundamentalism in all its forms and on whatever subject.

But what would you do if you were in charge of Channel 4 news? They have a duty of care to their staff and were between a rock and a hard place. It is all very well to stand firm if it is only you who might get hurt.

But it's already been shown on the BBC and is all over Twitter and FB. At what point does imagined threat become self fulfilling?

Why show the cartoon at all? Mention it on the news but don't bother with pictures, rather than censored ones. Blacking out one part just seems inflammatory.

It would have been better for C4 not to have shown the picture at all. By censoring it they are essentially giving up impartial reporting of a news item. By not showing it at all, they would not have been doing that. Clearly a foolish editor who thinks she has to worry the whole time about what someone somewhere might, just might, take exception to. Ridiculous. She is clearly not well trained in news reporting whatever else she's competent at.

It wasn't so much the cartoon that offended, more the offensive language that went with the twitter feed.
I have to say that I find the Jesus & Mo cartoons very funny.
They got short shrift from Paddy Ashdown, though.

Not sure what offensive language you're talking about, petra. I understand that Nawaz told the tweeters who sent him death threats to fuck off. That seems perfectly reasonable language in the circumstances.

This is an good take on the BBC's censorship by Ophelia Benson. Same applies to C4. Well said Ophelia.

Surely death threats, by definition, involve worse language than straightforward swearing.

I don't know, absent. I didn't look attheentire Twitterfeed. As I understand the death threats involved telling Nawaz that the countries where blasphemy (or whatever he was supposed to be doing wrong by NOT being offended by a cartoon) is punsihable with the death threat. This includes Pakistan where he has family and visits regularly. So they were not direct death threats but amounted to as much. The threateners, in short, were being very nasty, and knew it.

He later apologised for saying fuck off but, y'know, in the heat of the moment, it does seem like an appropriate response. Of course he wasn't thinking of being polite; he was just reacting to something horrible in a natural way, as we all would, even the saints amonst us.

punishable with the death penalty

There is a difference isn't there between saying "all members of our religion must obey this rule" - whether it is not having an abortion, not getting divorced, taking the name of Jesus in vain, women going out without headscarves or depicting the prophet - and saying "everyone in this secular society must obey our rule (or else)". If people live in a secular society they cannot be allowed to impose their own within-religion rules on everyone.
Same principle applies whether you are trying to ban gay marriage or ban images of the prophet. We should not encourage the tiny minority who try to bully people and organisations. There were 2 students who were suspended from a London university for wearying t shirts with one of these cartoons. The university subsequently apologised .

Well said JessM