To republish or not to republish: The “Je Suis Charlie” Mohammed cartoon and journalistic paradigms in a global context

Introduction

Nineteenth century British journalist and newspaper publishing magnate, Alfred Harmsworth (1st Viscount Northcliffe) is reported to have stated that: “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress, all the rest is advertising” (Oxford Reference, 2013). The 7 January 2015 terrorist attack at the editorial offices of French satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, demonstrates that Harmsworth's observation, which shrewdly described the realities of the newspaper business in England more than a century ago, is just as relevant in today's global, interconnected, digital media age. In effect, the two Kalashnikov-wielding Islamist terrorists who had burst into the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo, an iconoclastic, satirical newspaper, and opened fire, killing the managing editor Stéphane Charbonnier and 11 other persons, and wounding 11 others, carried out a perfect act of “censorship of the deed” (Eko, 2002). As the terrorists left the scene of the massacre, security cameras recorded them shouting: “On a vengé le prophète Mohammed, on a tué Charlie Hebdo” (We have avenged Prophet Mohammed, we have killed Charlie Hebdo) (Tourancheau, 2015). This declaration was a clear indication that the attack had been motivated by the satirical cartoons of Prophet Mohammed that Charlie Hebdo had published, over the strenuous, vehement, and emotional objection of French Muslim groups, the 57-member country Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League, and Muslim countries around the world. All attempts to persuade French courts to issue censorious injunctions that would have prevented Charlie Hebdo from publishing the controversial Mohammed cartoons had been unsuccessful (Eko, 2012). The censorious Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack made the irreverent, anticlerical, leftist-wing, satirical newspaper the subject of the news around the globe. The purpose of this study is to examine journalistic paradigm work—culture-specific iterations of the “way” of perceiving and constructing reality—using as comparative case studies, journalistic editorial decisions regarding republication or nonrepublication of the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon. In the Charlie Hebdo affair, editorial decisions took place in an interconnected, globalized media environment where there is acute tension between the right of freedom of expression and expectations of respect for religion.

One week after the murderous terrorist attack, the surviving journalists and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo published a defiant “survivors” edition with a cover that featured the banner headline: “Tout Est Pardonné” (All is Forgiven), and a cartoon of a tearful Mohammed holding a sign that read: “Je Suis Charlie” (I am Charlie), a slogan that had been coined to demonstrate solidarity with Charlie Hebdo, and to show support for freedom of expression (Figure 1). That defiant cover became an unprecedented global media phenomenon. It went viral on the Internet and became a global best seller (Vidon, 2015). It had an initial print run of one million copies (the usual Charlie Hebdo weekly print run was 30,000). Hundreds of French citizens lined up in front of newspaper kiosks to purchase copies of that special edition, which sold out in a matter of hours. The print run was extended to more than 8 million (Vidon, 2015). Muslims around the world were not amused by the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover. Many found it offensive, and protested against its publication. OPEN IN VIEWER

The 2015 terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo kicked off a major global polemic about Mohammed cartoons that presented media outlets around the world with a rather delicate dilemma. They had to decide whether to republish or not to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover, knowing full well that Mohammed cartoons had precipitated the terrorist attack. In this emotionally, religiously, and politically charged global event, the fundamental problem of editorial discretion depended on the margin of maneuver—the level of independence—each media outlet enjoyed.

The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, like the Mohammed cartoons controversy of 2006, was a transnational, global media event (Eide et al., 2008; Eko, 2012) that presented an opportunity to examine the notion of journalism as a paradigm with multiple cultural iterations. The editorial dilemma that arose in the aftermath of the attack provided an opportunity to examine, from a comparative, international perspective, the decision-making criteria of news organizations that practice different iterations of the journalistic paradigm within different politico-cultural contexts. This study was carried out within the framework of journalism as a paradigmatic craft influenced by the specific politico-cultural contexts in which it is ensconced. Most of the literature on journalistic paradigms is grounded in the American news paradigm and takes that context for granted. This study extends the theoretical framework of journalistic paradigms to other cultural contexts. In fact, dominant themes that emerged from this study reveal tensions between transnational journalistic solidarity as a form of paradigm work on an international level and the use of editorial independence as a paradigm repair mechanism within specific journalistic contexts.

Journalistic paradigms: a global, comparative perspective

Paradigms serve as culture-specific guiding principles in decision-making processes and are somehow “taken-for-granted.” That is, they are often unspoken and are only occasionally expressed explicitly (Coddington, 2012). Bennett et al. (1985) argued that journalists share a “paradigmatic understanding” of what news is (and isn't). Scholars of journalism have researched the notion that journalism operates through a professional paradigm, a way of seeing and interpreting the world that is taken for granted as the way by those who practice it. Journalistic paradigms—and there are multiple journalistic cultures and paradigms around the world—have implicit and explicit, culture-specific “contextual matrixes,” to borrow the expression of Legrand (2003: 240) that shape journalistic reportage. These unspoken approaches to reality vary across countries, geographic regions, and cultures. Journalistic cultures are cultures of representation that are often associated with specific national or cultural geographies, and take many forms. Indeed, different journalistic cultures, paradigms, and traditions give the craft a diversity that is evident in its different iterations, manifestations, traditions, styles, news paradigms, cultures, models, organizational structures, codes of ethics, routines, and so on (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007; Esser and Umbricht, 2013; Gaunt and Prichard, 1990; Hachten, 1992; Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Reese, 1990, 2008).

From a comparative and international perspective, journalism is the mastery of the culture-specific process and routines of the construction and representation of the reality of happenings and occurrences. The media in general and journalism in particular are therefore symbolic socio-political and cultural institutions (Fontaine, 2007) whose roles in specific countries reflect the ideologies and political cultures of these countries. In the United States, the media in general and journalism in particular operate under a First Amendment regime that bequeathed to them, a checking or watchdog role. This has led to the emergence of a journalistic culture that has a skeptical attitude towards the government, governmental institutions, and government officials (Schauer, 2005). Journalism in the United States is related to “objective” fact-finding reportorial work (Schudson, 2001: 166). For its part, the French literary and editorial press tradition (la presse d'opinion) which is very literary, didactic, interpretative, and opinion-based contrasts sharply with the fact-based, hard-news, “objective” journalistic tradition of the United States (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007). In short, each journalistic or news paradigm is ensconced in a specific politico-cultural context that determines its approach to organizing reality and presenting the truth.

The culture-specific construct “news” is part of the journalistic paradigm in all parts of the world. To provide a broader picture of news paradigms in the Western World, Esser and Umbricht (2014) found that diffusion of the American “hard-news paradigm” led to the emergence of various forms and constellations of news content. These “news cultures” differed from each other based on historical, institutional, and cultural contexts. Overall, all the emerging news paradigms, while embodying important differences, have drifted toward interpretative journalism over time.

At the social system level the news paradigm functions as a way of creating ideological boundaries for mainstream journalists that prevent personal values and frames of mind from manifesting themselves in the news (Reese, 1990). The news paradigm lets journalists follow and embrace culture-specific journalistic paradigms. As Zelizer (2004) underscored, journalists must work according to paradigmatic standards, as well as reinforce and police them. If this does not take place, different forms of paradigm repair strategies are employed to mitigate or avoid paradigmatic transgressions. Sometimes journalists purge deviants from their midst in order to redeem the image of the larger institution (Steiner et al., 2013). Paradigm repair is a corrective reaction to an event that is undermining the credibility of news organizations and most importantly, the authority of journalism. Journalists will work toward restoring and rebuilding the credibility of journalism. The aim is to repair the paradigm that has been brought into question or even disrepute by specific unprofessional or unethical actions.

Following the above conceptualization of journalistic cultures and paradigms, the expressions “news media paradigm” and “journalistic paradigm” refer to the shared, culture-specific mindsets in journalism with respect to the nature of the craft, and the core meaning of news that is often implicitly guiding and impacting different journalistic cultures (Esser and Umbricht, 2014). Thus, despite the different politico-cultural contexts in which it is ensconced, as well as its diverse models, journalism has certain structural parallels, the most common of which is narrativity (storytelling), “news” presentation, and defense of the cultural sovereignty of the craft against critics, authoritarian governments, and nongovernmental opponents.

Journalistic cultures, news paradigms, and the Charlie Hebdo controversy

Editorial cartoons, which are well-known rituals of satirical journalism, are an integral part of specific journalistic cultures and news paradigms (Eko, 2015; Eko and Berkowitz, 2009). In recent years, editorial cartoons, and specifically, cartoons of Prophet Mohammed have been the subject of global news controversies that riveted the attention of international media (Craft and Waisbord, 2008; Eko and Berkowitz 2009; Kunelius and Nossek, 2008). When there are multiple perspectives on how to exercise the journalistic paradigm and the right to satirize, as was the case with Charlie Hebdo affair, there is also simultaneity of awareness among global audiences, which allows reflectiveness and timeliness in the ways media organizations undertake paradigm work. In this interconnected world, journalism must navigate between its “vertical orientation,” a journalistic paradigm ensconced in the culture and traditions of a specific nation-state, and its institutionalized paradigm, a “horizontal” perspective or global outlook, which is characterized by more cosmopolitan, pluralistic, and universal values that transcend narrow national traditions and frameworks (Reese, 2008). The horizontal dimension of global journalism also transcends specific paradigms, thus bringing into question the assumption that paradigm work must only take place within specific countries. In other words, paradigm work can take place based on shortcomings involving media outlets and issues within a specific nation, but it can also be triggered by shortcomings within the profession of journalism that may have occurred within a nation, but have transnational ramifications that affect journalism as a global profession. This was the case in the Charlie Hebdo affair.

At the global level, the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack was an attack on freedom of expression. The attack was also a rejection of the rule of law and of the historic, satirical paradigm of French journalistic culture. After the attack, the French media and political establishment, as well as the media in other parts of the world assumed a posture of resistance. When its constitutionally protected role is challenged, as was the case in France, journalism asserts the institutional authority to define and generate a particular kind of knowledge based on the search for truth; knowledge that demonstrates a way of seeing the world and constructing reality. Differentiation of journalistic cultures and paradigms is part of the game of assertion of institutional legitimacy. This comparative exercise sometimes leads to criticism of other journalistic cultures and news paradigms. We saw earlier that Esser and Umbricht (2014) found that American-style hard-news journalism had diffused differentially to a number of European countries with different outcomes on the news product. The question is whether journalistic paradigmatic comparison is an internal, organizational negotiating process that leads to exclusion of “deviant” actors—media organizations whose practices depart from the taken for granted horizontal, global journalistic paradigm—or is it in fact a global paradigmatic attempt to create a global journalistic paradigm?

Although the concepts of a global journalistic culture and paradigm work as forms of institutional legitimization and negotiation of power within and across countries have rarely been conceptualized together by journalism scholars, they serve as the theoretical basis of this study because they expand paradigm work beyond the traditional nation-state analysis delineated by territorial borders. Both concepts speak to the authority of journalism to defend and repair its paradigms and to negotiate its boundaries in its vertical dimension (as widely pointed out by paradigm work case studies within particular media systems) and in its horizontal dimension (as a global approach to understanding paradigm work and differentiation processes in the context of a global news paradigm). Taking into considerations the interconnectedness of journalistic parallels and paradigms and the way journalists react to events that happen transnationally (Eide et al., 2008), this study contributes to journalistic paradigm research by illuminating paradigm work not only as a form of defending and repairing journalism as an institution within specific countries, but also as an instrument for the legitimation of the journalistic craft at the horizontal or global dimension, in comparison with other journalistic cultures and specific paradigms within those cultures. This approach “helps to prevent parochialism and ethnocentrism, but also [enables us] to better understand one's own system by juxtaposing its familiar structures against those of other systems” (Esser, 2013: 113). Eventually, combining findings from global journalistic paradigm studies with previous case studies on paradigm work will contribute to an epistemological shift in comparative communication research. A shift from national centrality to transnational complexity is engendered by networked communication that creates a new form of public connectivity that often sidelines traditional media system (Volkmer, 2012).

Research questions

The following research questions guided this study:

RQ1: How did the editorial policy statements issued by French, German, British and US media justifying their decisions to republish or not to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover represent journalistic paradigm work?

During the 2005–2006 Mohammed cartoons affair that was triggered by publication of 12 cartoons of Mohammed in the Danish newspaper, Jylland Posten, the European media criticized the American media for their failure to republish the Mohammed cartoons in solidarity with their European counterparts, despite the much vaunted freedoms the American media enjoyed under the First Amendment (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007; Eko, 2012). This gave rise to the following research questions:

RQ2: How did the editorial policy statements issued by the American media outlets under study to justify their decisions to republish or not to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover represent journalistic paradigm work under the First Amendment?

Method

In order to answer the research question, this study took the form of a comparative qualitative textual analysis of the publicly stated editorial positions of a number of international media outlets with respect to republication of the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon. These outlets were selected according to the following criteria:

European and American newspapers of record that provide opportunities for comparative analysis. The following newspapers were selected: The Washington Post, the New York Times, Le Monde, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). These newspapers have traditionally been classified as major international newspapers of record. As a result, their reporting and editorial postures on international affairs serve as the proverbial rough drafts of history (Eveno, 2001; Hachten, 1992).

We limited our search to the period 7–15 January 2015. This 8-day period covers the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo, the huge, international, “Je Suis Charlie” marches republicaines (republican marches) organized by the French government in Paris, and publication of the “survivors'” edition of Charlie Hebdo with the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover. We carried out searches on the websites, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts of the selected media outlets using the following topic keywords and hashtags: Charlie Hebdo survivors' edition, Je Suis Charlie, Mohammed cartoons, freedom of expression, solidarity, and terrorist attacks. The focus of our search was the editorial policy statements, editorials, interviews, editorial columns, and blog posts of public editors (ombudsmen/women), editorial page editors, editors-in-chief, journalistic standards officials, and media critics of these media outlets with respect to republication of Charlie Hebdo's Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon. We did not analyze reader comments or conversation threads.

The search and cross-check yielded a sample of 38 editorials, editorial columns, policy statements, blog posts, and public editor/ombudsperson columns that focused on the issue of republication of the Charlie Hebdo Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon. We carried out textual analyses of these media outlets in English, French, and German. We followed a grounded textual analytic approach that involved close, multiple, iterative readings and analyses of the texts (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002).

Results

The first research question was concerned with the extent to which the editorial decisions taken by the media outlets under study represented journalistic paradigm work. The close reading of editorial declarations, policy statements, and decisions of the media outlets revealed two main components of journalistic paradigm work. First, we found that journalistic solidarity, a metaphorical circling of the wagons in support of the embattled Charlie Hebdo, amounted to transnational journalistic paradigm maintenance. Previous research (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007) has shown that some journalistic paradigms exist, first and foremost, to defend the status quo that allows the craft to exist and function. Western journalistic paradigms generally work to protect freedom of expression from threats posed by the dogmatic religiosity or ideology of the “Other” of the interconnected globe. Therefore, in Western societies, when the hard-won right of freedom of expression—including the right to blaspheme and offend religion— is threatened, journalists use their paradigmatic mission to unite and form bonds of solidarity that help them better defend the right of freedom of expression, and by extension, the journalistic paradigm (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007; Eko, 2012). In other words, solidarity is a journalistic paradigm repair mechanism, a form of transnational paradigm work that gives the craft breathing space in the face of intimidation and violence. The idea is that there is power in numbers. The main justification for the media outlets closing ranks behind Charlie Hebdo was that they considered freedom of expression a human right, the very stock-in-trade of journalism, as well as the life-blood of democracy. Journalistic solidarity in the face of censorious terrorism linked journalistic paradigm work to the horizontal dimension of journalism (i.e., its global interconnectivity).

We found that in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack of 2015, journalists in Europe, as a professional union, and journalists in specific news outlets, promptly engaged in defending the satirical journalistic paradigm that had been attacked and brought into question in Paris. The editorial postures of all the media outlets under study demonstrated that in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, there was a journalistic closing of ranks, a metaphorical rallying round Charlie Hebdo as a way of defending the legitimacy of French satirical journalistic epistemology—the culture-specific worldview regarding the witty and humorous construction and re-presentation of reality, knowledge, and truth within a paradigm of secular republicanism (Berkowitz and Eko, 2007; Eko, 2013; Morin, 1990).

Beyond defense of the journalistic paradigm, journalistic solidarity represented a defense of positive freedoms, the right to freedom of conscience, opinion, and expression. It essentially became paradigm defense. Paradigm solidarity and defense were especially pronounced in Continental Europe where virtually all the major media outlets republished Mohammed cartoons both to express solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and also to support the larger issue of freedom of expression. For example, the Hamburger Morgenpost, a newspaper in Germany, republished a Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon to show solidarity with its French satirical counterpart, and to defend the right of freedom of expression. The caption on the Hamburger Morgenpost cover read: “So viel Freiheit muss sein” (This much freedom must be possible). On 11 January, 4 days after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, terrorists firebombed the offices of the Hamburger Morgenpost. The newspaper reported on its website that it had received an outpouring of solidarity and support from news outlets, politicians, and ordinary people around the world (Brandanschlag auf die MOPO, 2015).

The Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack and the firebombing of the Hamburger Morgenpost led Jan-Eric Peters (2015), then editor-in-chief of Die Zeit, a leading German national daily newspaper, to engage in journalistic paradigm defense. In an editorial, Peters lamented that terrorist attacks on the media in Paris and Hamburg were: “an attack on ‘our’ values, an attack on freedom of the press and freedom of conscience, opinion, and expression… The attacks are targeting the heart of our culture.” He said that freedom of expression in general, and the journalistic craft in particular, were very crucial components of democratic societies. Peters explained that it was the solidarity among journalists that led to such extensive coverage of the Charlie Hebdo attacks: “Media coverage is driven by the feeling of closeness and empathy as each of us can identify with what happened and how it must have felt to be attacked by radical groups” (Peters, 2015). Peters expressed admiration for “his colleagues” at Charlie Hebdo who had decided to publish a new edition of the newspaper so soon after the attacks: “The will to freedom is unbreakable,” he concluded (Peters, 2015).

Editors from diverse journalistic cultures saw the Charlie Hebdo attack and the Hamburger Morgenpost firebombing as existential threats to freedom of expression in general, and the journalistic paradigm in particular. The embattled French media mounted a very robust defense of freedom of expression in general, and French satirical journalism in particular. Just days after the terrorist attack, Richard Malka, the lawyer and spokesman for the “bad boys of Charlie Hebdo” (Jaxel-Truer, 2015), as the French fondly referred to the Charlie Hebdo team, told Le Monde that Charlie Hebdo was engaged in an existential struggle with the extremist forces of “obscurantism…we will cede nothing,” he declared. Malka lamented that in America, where the First Amendment is supposed to be king, some American media outlets had refused to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover, while others had blurred the image in their news reports (Jaxel-Truer, 2015). For its part, Le Monde, the French newspaper of record that is known for its political independence (Eveno, 2001), published a front-page cartoon that reproduced the Charlie Hebdo cover. The editor-in-chief, Jérôme Fenoglio, declared that the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cover was: “…neither insulting nor aggressive. We defend our right to publish any cartoon that is not insulting” (Soullier et al., 2015) (Figure 2). OPEN IN VIEWER

American media editorial decision-making as paradigm work

The second research question was concerned with how the editorial policy statements issued by the American media outlets under study to justify decisions to republish or not to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon represented journalistic paradigm work. The Charlie Hebdo affair exposed a journalistic rift within the American media. Some of the major American outlets and aggregators, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, Gawker, The Drudge Report, CBS News, the Huffington Post, and others, republished the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover (Calderone, 2015). Other media outlets, notably, The New York Times, CNN, and NBC decided not to republish any Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons. Pundits, viewers, and the media themselves engaged in active paradigmatic differentiation between those that republished the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover and those that decided not to republish. Media outlets that did not republish the cartoon were implicitly or explicitly accused of failing to uphold the tenets of journalism and freedom of expression. This put them on the defense, and led them to employ a number of strategies to defend their editorial decisions, and by extension, their perspective on the journalistic paradigm. These strategies included editorial columns that summarized reader or viewer comments, columns by public editors or ombudspersons, policy statements by editorial boards, and interviews by editors or other officials responsible for enforcing codes of ethics, and journalistic standards.

Immediately after the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, The Washington Post decided to republish Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons, including the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon, as newsworthy visuals. The Post then proceeded to engage in journalistic paradigm surveillance and differentiation (Wemple, 2015b). Its blogs monitored and excoriated media outlets that had decided not to republish the cartoons. On the day of the terrorist attack, media blogger Eric Wemple (2015a) took CNN and its presenter, Wolf Blitzer, to task for presenting a segment that featured the assassinated Charlie Hebdo editor-in-chief Stéphane Charbonnier without clearly showing the cartoons that caused his assassination. Wemple's blog showed screen shots of the CNN episode in question, which featured Charbonnier posing with a Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon—with the cartoon cropped out of the frame. Wemple (2015a) asked the rhetorical question: “What's the point of showing an editor presenting the cover of his publication while not showing the cover of the publication?” Wemple essentially engaged in paradigm repair by questioning CNN's journalistic standards. The Washington Post continued its paradigm surveillance, differentiation, and defense with an article that compared CNN's uncensored coverage of al-Qaeda, and its censored reporting of the Mohammed cartoons that were alleged to have triggered the Charlie Hebdo attacks: “CNN won't republish Charlie Hebdo cartoons, will republish al-Qaeda propaganda,” the headline of the blog read (Wemple, 2015c).

When Charlie Hebdo published its famous Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover, another Washington Post blogger Farhi (2015) wrote a blog post entitled: “Washington Post carries new Charlie Hebdo cover depicting prophet Muhammad.” The reporter explained the official policy of the Post with respect to republication of Charlie Hebdo's Mohammed cartoons:

The Washington Post has published the latest cover of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which features an image of the prophet Muhammad, despite criticism from conservative Muslims that such depictions are blasphemous and offensive…Washington Post Executive Editor Martin Baron approved publication of the image on The Post's blog and in the newspaper. It is apparently the first time a Muhammad depiction has appeared in The Post's news columns. Baron said last week that the paper's policy was to avoid publication of material that is “deliberately” offensive to religious groups but said Monday that the new Charlie Hebdo cartoon did not meet that criterion. We've never maintained that simply publishing an image of Muhammad itself was offensive,” Baron said.

Journalistic paradigm repair: the case of The New York Times

The New York Times had a different editorial policy from the Washington Post. After the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack of 7 January 2015, The Times decided not to republish any of the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons. An avalanche of fierce criticism and attacks by readers, competitors (notably, the Washington Post), media pundits, bloggers, and other media outlets from around the world ensued. The critics charged The New York Times with journalistic shortcomings that included political correctness, failure to show journalistic solidarity, and cowardice in the face of terroristic challenges to freedom of speech and of the press. It soon became necessary for the newspaper to go into damage control and paradigm repair mode. The public editor of the newspaper led the paradigm repair effort. On 8 January, she published a column entitled, “A close call on publication of Charlie Hebdo Cartoons” (Sullivan, 2015a). She assured critics that The New York Times had not been “cowardly and lacking in journalistic solidarity” when it decided not to republish the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons that had ostensibly triggered the terrorist attacks of the previous day. She stated that the decision not to republish was precipitated by concerns about staff safety in international bureaus, as well as the sensibilities of Muslim readers. She concluded that: “The Times undoubtedly made a careful and conscientious decision in keeping with its standards. However, given these events…a review and reconsideration of those standards may be in order in the days ahead.”

That statement did not mollify the critics and readers of the New York Times. Another avalanche of critical comments followed the Times' refusal to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon. The New York Times' decision not to republish any Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons essentially made it the subject of news in the United States and other parts of the world. The executive editor, Dean Baquet, was interviewed by media outlets ranging from Der Spiegel (Germany) and Politico to American television networks. Baquet vigorously defended the decision of the newspaper's editorial board not to republish any Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons. Baquet's assertion of editorial independence, and his paradigm repair efforts were not very persuasive. The newspaper's public editor, Sullivan (2015b), kicked the paradigm repair work one notch higher. She conceded that the New York Times should have republished the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon image:

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. The cartoon itself, while it may disturb the sensibilities of a small percentage of Times readers, is neither shocking nor gratuitously offensive. And it has, undoubtedly, significant news value. With Charlie Hebdo's expanded press run of millions of copies for this post-attack edition, and a great deal of global coverage, the image is being seen, judged and commented on all over the world. Times readers should not have had to go elsewhere to find it.

Differences between the European and American media over republication of the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon

The third research question was concerned with whether there were differences between the editorial postures of the European and American media outlets under study with respect to republication of the Charlie Hebdo Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon cover image and how these differences could be explained. Journalistic solidarity and differentiation were predominant paradigmatic themes that emerged from this study. The European media editorialized on the editorial decisions of American and British news outlets that declined to republish Charlie Hebdo's Mohammed cartoons. They delineated a border within the Western journalistic confraternity between those media outlets that had republished the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cover and those that had decided not to do so. Joffe (2015), publisher and editor of Die Zeit, claimed that the decision by a number of major American media outlets not to republish the Je Suis Charlie Mohammed cartoon was a victory for fear. He specifically deplored the decision of the New York Times not to republish the cartoon and parodied the newspaper's motto as “what is safe to print,” meaning the newspaper took editorial decisions based on safety concerns rather than concerns about freedom of the press. He asked rhetorically whether killers should be allowed to have editorial control over freedom of expression in the Western World. In the view of Die Zeit, the editorial posture of the New York Times was: “absurd and toxic…Freedom of expression is only a value if defending it involves risks” Joffe (2015). Die Zeit was clearly involved in paradigm repair through differentiation of courageous European journalism from an American media outlet that it felt had not lived up to the minimum expectations of the transnational journalistic paradigm.

Le Monde and Charlie Hebdo also took to task, those sections of the American media that had failed to defend freedom of expression and the journalistic paradigm of visual satirical criticism. Using its intellectual posture of positive freedom, which means freedom to criticize philosophical systems and worldviews—including religion—Le Monde drew a distinction between French/Continental European and Anglo-American journalistic attitudes toward freedom of expression and blasphemy. Both Le Monde and Charlie Hebdo criticized the American media for failing to appreciate the nuances of French satirical wit, and for failing to make a distinction between the fact that one can support Charlie Hebdo's right of Freedom of expression without supporting its cartoons (Soullier et al., 2015).

Despite this strident differentiation on the part of European media outlets, media coverage of the 2015 Mohammed cartoons crisis was different from that of the 2005–2006 Mohammed cartoons crisis. As we saw earlier, the approach of the American media toward republication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons was not as monolithic as it was during the Mohammed cartoons controversy of 2006. The majority of American media outlets republished Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons in 2015, and actively differentiated themselves from their counterparts who did not republish the cartoons. The reasons for the difference of editorial opinion between 2006 and 2015 may be the nature of the controversy. While many American media outlets viewed the Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons as an unnecessary provocation of a powerless religious minority by an obscure Scandinavian newspaper, the brazen terrorist attack against Charlie Hebdo in the heart of Paris, the heavy loss of life that resulted from the attack and subsequent collateral events, made the attack a global affair that shocked the American media—with the notable exception of the New York Times—which is much less confrontational, more sensitive to security concerns, and to the feelings of religious minorities than its Continental European counterparts. The Charlie Hebdo affair may have helped create a transnational confraternity of global journalism that transcends geographic boundaries, journalistic cultures, and paradigms.

Conclusion and discussion

This study approached journalistic paradigms from a comparative perspective. The assumption was that journalism is a pluralistic paradigm with multiple iterations, cultures, styles, and ways of seeing and reporting the world (Esser and Umbricht, 2013). The Charlie Hebdo affair was triggered by a culture-specific French journalistic paradigm—satirical journalism—that has been part of French journalistic culture and wit since the Revolution of 1789. This study demonstrated that there was a deep cultural conflict at the core of the Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoons controversy. Though France is, culturally speaking a “Catho-secular state (Morin, 1990: 38)”, founded in 496 AD as a Catholic state, the culture-specific paradigm of French satirical journalism is ensconced in the post-Revolutionary French national ideology of secular republicanism (Eko, 2012). French satirical journalism is created for French and French-speaking elite audiences that understand its cultural nuances and “contextual matrices” (Legrand, 2003). Due to globalization, the material intended for French-speaking audiences has now been globalized to readers in different politico-cultural and religious contexts where satirical exaggeration of the truth is an alien concept. The problem of Charlie Hebdo, Jyllands-Posten, and Nerikes Allehanda (Sweden) and other newspapers that have been caught in the maelstrom of Mohammed cartoon controversies is that due to globalization and the interconnection of nations, cultures, and peoples, they are read, misread, interpreted, and misinterpreted differentially by global audiences that are not their intended target audiences.

The “replacement” editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, Gérard Biard, who took over after the assassination of Stéphane Charbonnier by the terrorists, explained the tension Charlie Hebdo feels between what it sees as its journalistic role as a satirical newspaper in French society, and the new, unintended global audiences that its Mohammed cartoons and the terrorist attack have earned it: “It's sometimes difficult because you speak to people that are not supposed to read you” (Devichand, 2016). Biard's observation is apt. The question of the culturally relative concept of “truth” is crucial in any understanding of French satirical journalism. Journalistic parody and satire—in any language—are not paradigms that purport to present the literal truth or even substantial truth. The modus operandi of satirical journalism is to enter into complicity with readers in its cultural space, and, with a knowing cultural wink and a metaphorical nod, present an exaggeration of the truth for purposes of criticism (Eko, 2012, 2015). Global crises like the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack create situations where journalists and editors have to weigh the right of freedom of expression against violent demands for respect for religious sensibilities. A theme that emerged from the analysis was that Continental European media and sections of the Anglo-American media have different cultural perceptions of the journalistic paradigm. In Continental Europe, media outlets framed the Charlie Hebdo attack as a murderous attack on freedom of expression that had to be countered by paradigm solidarity, resistance, and defiance. Many continental European media outlets saw sections of the Anglo-American press as an insular outlier of the journalist paradigm that did not appreciate the gravity of the dangers facing freedom of expression.

The main contribution of this research project lies in its explanation of how the process of paradigm work was evident in the context of a global politico-cultural crisis triggered by a terrorist attack on the media. It shows that paradigm work is culturally different, depending on specific journalistic cultures and media systems. While paradigm work in the liberal Anglo-American media outlets (Hallin and Mancini, 2004) focused on editorial independence and organizational credibility, paradigm work in the German and French media outlets under study presented the idea of transnational journalistic solidarity as paradigmatic defense of freedom of expression.

Furthermore, the comparative approach of this study offered the opportunity to examine paradigm surveillance and differentiation across countries and within some countries. Paradigm surveillance and differentiation processes add contextual meaning to the overall idea of paradigm repair. Comparative journalistic paradigm studies add to knowledge of journalistic cultures and explain journalistic strategies used to carry out paradigm surveillance, defense, and maintenance. They also show that journalistic paradigm defense is a form of resistance against the arbitrary instrumentalization of violence to achieve political, religious, and ideological ends. At the end of the day, journalistic paradigm work is aimed at maintaining institutional legitimacy and credibility for purposes of maintaining power and relevance in democratic societies.