A terrorist attack caused by two men (later related to Al-Qaeda) who entered the Charlie Hebdo magazine’s headquarters in Paris the last 7th January, killing people working there, and also police officers. They claimed that they had been offended by some satirical pictures about Mahoma posted in the magazine.

We started this assignment with the intention of studying how different newspapers analyze the news, based on tendencies, ideologies… and learn how they work.

To analyse this issue, we could count on diversity of opinions to do so.

Our group is divided in two main points of view. One part of the group thinks that even though we absolutely support freedom of speech, there must be some ethical boundaries when it comes to expressing yourself. Thus we believe that the journal Charlie Hebdo crossed the line of respect and offence to people’s religious believes (in this case, Islam), publishing satirical cartoons about who they believe to be a leading figure in their lives (in this case, Mahoma). You can choose either to publish  controversial issues or not, but if you do, you must bear in mind that doing so entails moral values and people’s feelings being hurt. Also, as said in class before, it is a matter of sympathy. You have to contemplate as well the fact that Muslims find in religion an identity, and they feel religion in a different way than we do.

The other part, disagrees and think that as a magazine that is stablished in a free country, with rights, Charlie Hebdo could publish whatever they wanted to; because in a free country like France you can not always think about what people might think or feel , it would take a massive amount of time and some people would always disagree becuase of their commitment to their religion. In this case the drawing of Mahoma is not allowed by muslims and considered as an insult; but the fact that those muslims are living in France, and be considered French, means they also should be more open-minded. In any case, both parts agree in the fact that no one can take away the life of any person, and that even if we «are not Charlie» or if we are, killing is a crime that has to be condemned.

Raquel Armendariz

Sofía Arroyo

Lucía Rodríguez

Sascha Van der Veen