The BBC finds its spine

The Beeb, which up until now has judiciously avoided showing viewers these cartoons, will do so in the future. (A recent TV report on the controversy, in which the camera shows the top of yesterday's France Soir front page but stops short of revealing the cartoons themselves, can be viewed in the "Video and Audio" section of the BBC News website.)

The BBC said it would broadcast the cartoons which have caused a storm of protest in the Islamic world and led to the sacking of a French newspaper editor.

The cartoons include an image of the prophet Muhammad with a turban shaped like a bomb, and another showing him saying that paradise was running out of virgins.

The BBC emphasised that the images would be broadcast "responsibly" and "in full context" and "to give audiences an understanding of the strong feelings evoked by the story".

Scott Burgess has a list of Western newspapers which reprinted the cartoons. There's not a single paper from Britain, the United States or Canada among them. (In case you haven't seen the offending cartoons - which will send you directly to Hell as soon as you view them, so consider yourself warned - Michelle Malkin has posted all twelve here.)

Update: the New York Sun has published two of the cartoons.

Posted by damian at February 2, 2006 01:08 PM | TrackBack