President Obama intends to do all he can to influence freedom of the press if the media antagonizes Muslims.
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The White House announced that it will work to minimize the publishing of anti-Muslim and anti-Jihad articles in light of the recent Muslim terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in France for its perceived anti-Islam cartoons.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest stated last Monday that “The president … will not now be shy about expressing a view or taking the steps that are necessary to try to advocate for the safety and security of our men and women in uniform” whenever journalists’ work may provoke Muslim terror attacks.
This means that Obama intends to do all he can to influence freedom of the press if the media antagonizes Muslims, who in turn will go out and commit terror attacks, especially against “men and women in uniform.”
Whenever journalists consider publishing materials that may provoke the ire of Muslim terrorists, “I think there are a couple of absolutes,” Earnest told the reporters.
The first is “that the publication of any kind of material in no way justifies any act of violence, let alone an act of violence that we saw on the scale in Paris.”
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The second absolute was that Obama would fight the press critical of Muslims and Islam, ostensibly out of his strong belief “in the responsibility that he has to advocate for our men and women in uniform, particularly if it’s going to make them safer” by fighting articles that may anger Muslims.
”What won’t change is our view that that freedom of expression in no way justifies an act of violence against the person who expressed a view. And the president considers the safety and security of our men and women in uniform to be something worth fighting for,” Earnest stressed.
“What I’m saying is that individual news organizations have to assess that risk for themselves,” he said. “I think the point in the mind of the president and certainly everybody here at the White House is that that is a question that should be answered by journalists,” he added.
The White House has previously criticized Charlie Hebdo for a cartoon portraying Mohammad, stating in 2012 that the Obama administration is “aware that a French magazine published cartoons featuring a figure resembling the prophet Muhammad, and obviously we have questions about the judgment of publishing something like this.”
“We know these images will be deeply offensive to many and have the potential to be inflammatory,” spokesman Jay Carney stated at the time.