时报应该刊登《查理周报》新封面

With New Charlie Hebdo Cover, News Value Should Have Prevailed

时报应该刊登《查理周报》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.)

我上周发表了一篇文章，谈到《纽约时报》决定不刊登现在举世闻名的《查理周报》制作的先知穆罕默德漫画，众多读者对这篇文章予以了热切回应。(实际上，这是我的专栏或者文章中收获评论最多的一篇。)

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.

绝大多数读者都批评了时报的决定，强烈表示不管是从新闻价值来说，还是从支持言论自由，声援遇袭出版物的角度来说，《纽约时报》都应该刊登。

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，新的决定出台了，时报决定坚持先前的决定，不刊登《查理周报》新一期的封面。那张图是含泪的穆罕默德举着一块“我是查理”的牌子，还有“一切皆被宽恕”的字样。时报在文章中描述了这张封面，并提供了一个可以看到图片的链接。

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，这对印刷版读者没有什么帮助——如果他们唯一的新闻来源就是时报。他们在这动荡不安的整个一周中，可能对挑衅性的漫画是什么样子缺乏概念。这不利于他们了解真相。

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.)

我可以理解时报为什么不刊登“非常具有煽动性的图片”，这是主编迪恩·巴奎(Dean Baquet)上周对这些图片的形容。他觉得，要报道这家讽刺报纸的八名员工在恐怖袭击中丧生的事件，并不是非刊登这些极端的漫画不可。(时报刊登过《查理周报》的很多漫画，但没有任何一张含有穆罕默德的形象;另外，时报在上周的观点栏目中贴出了纪录短片视频，其中可以看到这些漫画的样子。)

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.)

巴奎先生做了一个艰难的选择，其中不乏对时报工作人员人身安全的考虑，尤其是那些在其他国家工作的员工。(这绝不是杞人忧天;几天前，有人把燃烧弹扔到了一家德国报纸的办公室，因为他们在巴黎袭击案之后刊出了这些漫画，现在又有了担心被报复的新顾虑。)

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.

很多人指责这个决定很“懦弱”，当然我不这么认为。巴奎最近几天屡次对我说，他在留意读者对上周那篇文章的评论，他觉得这些评论很认真，其中很多都很有说服力。他还转发给我几份读者来信，对于时报在上周表现出的克制和体谅，这些读者向他表示了感谢。

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，我呼吁重新审视时报的标准，巴奎先生告诉我，那正是不刊登任何穆罕默德漫画范例的依据。这其中当然有一个问题，刊登冒犯他人的图片所遵循的原则，在应用中是否严格执行，一视同仁;很多读者对此有所质疑。另一个问题是，在什么情形下，新闻评判应该优先于冒犯某些读者的可能性。

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.

我在周二问巴奎先生是否考虑过改变这一路线——一些新闻机构已经这样做了，包括《华尔街日报》(The Wall Street Journal)和《华盛顿邮报》(The Washington Post)新闻版——从而可以刊登新一期的封面图片。他告诉我，他考虑过，但决定不这样做，坚持原来的想法。

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.

我的看法是这样：《查理周报》新一期封面图片，是上周吸引了全世界瞩目的一个故事的重要组成部分。