Steyn: ‘Pansy-ified’ Western Media Step Up or Face Self-Censorship

In an appearance on “The Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel on Wednesday, conservative commentator Mark Steyn, author of “The Undocumented Mark Steyn,” reacted to the day’s events in Paris related to the killing of at least 12 at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in an apparent terror attack.

According to Steyn, the ultimate fallout from this will be self-censorship when it applied to criticizing Islam.

“[I] mean, I see all these teary candlelit vigils and everyone suddenly claiming to be freedom of speech. I think a consequence is a lot of people will retreat even further into self-censorship. The New York Daily News won’t even show – dishonors the dead in Paris by not even showing properly the cartoons. They pixelated Muhammad out of it so it looks like Muhammad is into the witness protection program. But they left the hook-nosed Jew in and that exactly gets to the double standard here. You can say anything you like about Christianity. You can say anything you like Judaism. But these guys – everybody understands the message – that if you say anything about Islam, these guys will kill you. And we will be retreating into a lot more self-censorship if the pansy-ified Western media doesn’t man up and decide to disburse the risk so they can kill one small satirical magazine. They got to kill all of us.”

Steyn called more of the mainstream media to step and challenge this notion and not leave up to smaller outlets to do so.

“[T]he fact they won’t show you them after people have been killed for them, shows that we’re actually retreating, the media, which congratulates itself on its bravery as one of the most tedious institutions for handing out awards for its bravery — far more than firemen or soldiers do, the fact they didn’t even have the courage to show these cartoons after they became a news story is why these brave men at Charlie Hebdo had to bear the burden almost single-handed. And what the New York Daily News did is absolutely disgraceful and dishonors the dead.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor