What was Gair Rhydd thinking?
There are slow news weeks. There are ‘no news’ weeks. And now, in certain special parts of Wales, there are ‘riding on the back of provocative world events to compensate for our complete lack of news’ weeks. The Cardiff University student newspaper Gair Rhydd’s decision to be the first and only newspaper in Britain to print the cartoons is nothing short of infantile attention-seeking.
The issue of whether or not the cartoons should have been printed in the nationals as a stand for free speech, or solidarity towards others exercising their free speech, is actually irrelevant in the context of the student readership in which they were seen. The fact that the pages they eventually ended up gracing were of a Welsh student rag (Guardian media award or no media award) succeeds in doing nothing more than belittling these noble national sentiments.
In fact, all this ‘controversial’ decision ends up doing is giving some handful of students an excuse to boast about their scrape with jihad, while bragging about panic buttons being set up around the house and telling increasingly fantastic stories of their own bravery in the face of Islamic fundamentalism.
The decision not to print these cartoons here has been informed not only by the fact that to do to so would be irresponsible and not within the remit of a student newspaper, but also, and mainly, because they are not particularly good. Were they making an original point, in an artistically viable way, any newspaper, even student newspapers, might have a case to ignore these other concerns and defend free speech. As it is, though, they are simply not good enough.
9th Feb 2006