Charlie Hebdo Columnist: We Will Not Be Silenced

It’s been roughly 24 hours since the world learned of the massacre at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo. Twelve innocent people were executed in cold blood. Presumably, extremists around the world celebrated these deaths because the slain had the temerity to publish a series of satirical cartoons offensive to Islam. But their “triumph” will be short-lived.

Why? Because their deadly efforts to silence a magazine that they loathed and even bombed are not going as planned:

Columnist Patrick Pelloux said the decision to continue to publish will show that "stupidity will not win".

It will have a print run of one million copies, compared with its usual 60,000 a week.

It will be half its usual length at eight pages long.

"It's very hard. We are all suffering, with grief, with fear, but we will do it anyway because stupidity will not win," Pelloux told the AFP news agency.

A million copies? That’s roughly a 16-fold increase. Thus, as a result of the terrorists’ indefensible and disgusting tactics, more people around the world will now see the cartoons. Is this what the perpetrators were hoping for?

At the same time, The Guardian reports that companies such as Google and others are chipping in to help with the publishing costs:

Google said it would donate €250,000 (£195,000) to help support the publication from its press innovation fund; a further €250,000 was pledged by French newspaper publishers, to be taken by a donation tax, according to a report in Les Echos.

The two groups involved in the distribution of the papers will take no fee for next week’s issue.

That's admirable. Nevertheless, there is much to be upset if not downright angry about. As Guy and Leah have both explained, too many media outlets (especially in the United States) are falling victim to self-restriction. Conservative author and pundit Mark Steyn called many of them out yesterday on Megyn Kelly’s primetime show. He especially blasted the New York Daily News for its pusillanimity and head-scratching journalistic practices:

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“The fact they that they didn’t even have the courage to show these cartoons after they became a news story is why these brave men at Charlie Hebdo had to bear the burden almost single-handed. [W]hat the New York Daily News did is absolutely disgraceful, I think, and dishonors the dead.”

See that photo below:

Courage.

Editor's note: This post has been updated.