Issue date: 2/16/06 Section: Editorial

Satirical or downright offensive? The Strand wants your opinion.

All media, student or otherwise, has a responsibility to its audience. Media should inform, invoke discussion, represent a wide range of ideas and encourage critical thinking. Granted, when student media is concerned, this role often takes a very tongue-in-cheek tone as it seeks to both appeal to and represent its demographic. The undergraduate experience is the universally-accepted time to find one's self, and for reasons yet to be documented, articles about thefacebook.com and funny headlines seem to help the process.

That being said, there are times when, in attempting to sort out their own priorities and personal opinions, the staff of student newspapers underestimate their influence. Student newspapers are in a perfect position to push the envelope since factors like media convergence don't come into play, nor do investors or advertisers. The wrath of the Dean's office and of various student groups, while forces to be reckoned with, seem much more manageable than that of CanWest Global.

However, you can only push an envelope so far before you get a nasty paper cut, one sure to be infected with the gangrene of social unrest.

Almost every newspaper on stands today has been following the controversy of the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Certain student newspapers got even more heavily involved when they decided to not only cover the controversy, but print the cartoons themselves. The Cadre, UPEI's campus newspaper, found its issues yanked from stands when protests ensued after reprinting said comics. Ray Keating, the Cadre's editor-in-chief, argued that it was a stand for freedom of the press. So the Cadre was merely fulfilling its responsibilities as a free media outlet, even if it was at the risk of being a mainstage attraction in a media circus.

But was it really freedom of the press, or a case of media martyrdom? Publishing these cartoons seems to do little more than fan the flames of already-existing controversy. Is it the press's responsibility to decide what people should absorb, or is providing an option more important? Articles are somewhat different; you can decide whether or not to read something based on the headline - which, admittedly, is questionable on the subject of giving audiences agency. A graphic or photograph, however, is much more intense: you don't really have the choice to view it or not.

Continued...

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