Blasphemy as sacred rite/right: “The mohammed cartoons affair” and maintenance of journalistic ideology

The controversy surrounding the publication of 12 cartoons about the Prophet Mohammad by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten can be seen as an issue of religion and freedom of speech. However, when European and American newspapers began to write articles and opinion pieces on the controversy, it began to represent something larger: the core values of a culture, including beliefs about national identity, immigration, and multiculturalism. This study examines news coverage by France's Le Monde and America's The New York Times through a qualitative textual analysis. Findings suggest that coverage became a journalistic ritual to restate and maintain core values of distinctly different French and American journalistic paradigms, as well as the national cultures from which those paradigms evolved.