The Charlie Hebdo Affair in the Journalistic Field of the United Kingdom

Abstract

This chapter is concerned with journalist conceptualizations of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack within the context of the geography of freedom of expression of the establishmentarian regime of the United Kingdom. It explores how the main public and private media of the multicultural British journalistic field dealt with the tensions spawned by Charlie Hebdo’s exercise of its human right to satirize religion in the monocultural, secular republican context of France. The question addressed is how the major media outlets in the multicultural British journalistic field used their editorial independence to manage the tension between the human right of freedom of expression—specifically, the journalistic right to illustrate news of the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack with relevant Charlie Hebdo Mohammed cartoon images—and Islamic injunctions against visual representations of Prophet Mohammed.