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Opinion
 

Staff Editorial

                Chris Elliott                        Zach Lee                  Christian Palmer
                Geronimo Rodriguez       Blake Whitaker       Kristen Young

Press censorship: Worst. Idea. Ever. 

On Feb. 9, The Daily Illini, the independent student newspaper of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, republished six of the 12 Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad that have become the center of a controversy involving protests, riots and a growing death toll. 

DI Editor in Chief Acton Gorton and Opinions Editor Charles Prochaska were both suspended pending the findings of a student task force formed to investigate the newspaper's decision-making process.

Mary Cory, the publisher and general manager of Illini Media, and the DI editorial staff claim the issue is not the cartoons themselves, but that they were run without consulting other members of the editorial staff.

Gorton was under no such obligation.

The editor in chief makes the final decision on all content, and he does not need to ask his staff for permission before he makes a decision or notify them after he does. As a result, he answers for all content as well. 

Gorton was well within the boundaries of his position when he chose to publish the cartoons, and he should have been able to face the community and deal with its reaction as an editor in chief. Instead, he has had his authority stripped and has lost what would have been an important learning experience.

At The Daily Cougar, we are quite familiar with the consequences of running controversial cartoons, but suspending an editor for an editorial decision sends a chilling message to newsrooms everywhere: Political correctness determines what you can print.

We don't like the sound of that.

Gorton's intentions were good; he meant to better inform his readers about the cartoons and let them weigh their merits for themselves. 

With that in mind, we are including the following Web address, where all 12 of the Danish cartoons can be found. http://cryptome.org/muhammad.htm