US: most major papers won't publish Mohammed cartoons

The executive editor of the Washington Post Leonard Downie Jnr. said of the cartoons: "They wouldn't meet our standards for what we publish in the paper … We have standards about language, religious sensitivity, racial sensitivity and general good taste."

The Los Angeles Times, which had reportedly planned to publish the cartoons over the weekend (see previous posting), issued the following statement: "Our newsroom and op-ed page editors, independently of each other, determined that the caricatures could be deemed offensive to some readers and the there were effective ways to cover the controversy without running the images themselves."

USA Today's deputy foreign editor Jim Michaels stated that he believed there would be no point in publishing the cartoons again, he added: "We have described them, but I am not sure running it would advance the story."

Kathleen Carroll, executive editor at The Associated Press, asserted that any publication of the cartoons does not add to the news coverage of the issue. She added: "If people want to find them, they are easily found."  

A New York paper, The New York Press, that had planned to publish the cartoons, but reversed the decision at the last minute, has seen a number of its staff members resign in protest. Editor in chief of The New York Press explained the events; he said that after being "ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons . . . the editorial group — consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man City Hall bureau Azi Paybarah — chose instead to resign our positions."

Source: Editor and Publisher, New York Post