Student editors suspended after publishing Muhammad cartoons

Editors suspended becuase they did not consult staff before publishing cartoons, interim editors say

© 2006 Student Press Law Center

February 16, 2006

ILLINOIS — Two editors at The Daily Illini were suspended Monday night, five days after they decided to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad.

Mary Cory, the newspaper’s publisher, suspended Editor in Chief Acton Gorton and opinion editor Chuck Prochaska because the two did not consult with the entire editorial board and other editors before publishing the cartoons, said one of the paper's interim editors in chief, Jason Koch.

“This was the tipping point of many smaller incidents. The staff said enough is enough,” Koch said.

A statement released by Koch and co-interim editor in chief Shira Weissman said Cory made the decision to suspend Gorton and Prochaska “only after it was requested by other student members of this newspaper and a newsroom-wide staff meeting about the issue.”

Student members of the newspaper staff are not allowed to suspend an editor in chief, according to the statement. Cory, who is not a student, acts as the newspaper’s publisher and adviser.

Gorton said that as editor in chief, he is not obligated to receive the approval of the editorial board or other editors before he publishes his opinion.

“There are no bylaws in [Illini Media Company] or any policies that say that I have to go to the editorial board before I publish anything,” Gorton said.

Cory did not return phone calls seeking comment.

The Daily Illini is an independent student newspaper at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and is overseen by the Illini Media Company board of directors, which includes student and faculty members.

The interim editors’ statement criticized Gorton’s decision, saying, “Something of this magnitude takes careful planning to handle in a sensitive and tactful manner while still getting the point across."

“Everybody in this newsroom agrees that the editor in chief is the person who has the final say of what goes in the newspaper, we all respect that," Koch said. ”This has nothing to do with free speech, it has to do with the manner in which the two did this."

Gorton and Prochaska decided last Wednesday to reprint six of the original cartoons accompanied with an editorial explaining why they were being run.

The cartoons and the editorial are no longer accessible on the student newspaper’s Web site.

The publication of the cartoons in the The Daily Illini has incensed the Muslim community on campus and struck fear in newsroom staff, Gorton said.

“Monday night we had a meeting and I addressed the staff. People were telling me why didn’t I consider their safety, and what if the newsroom was fire bombed,” Gorton said. “I couldn’t believe it. We’re Americans, we don’t do those kind of things here.”

Editors and staff at The Daily Illini say the suspension was a result of “the process” which Gorton and Prochaska went about publishing the cartoons and not the actual publication of the cartoons themselves.

Gorton said that the staff is using the process as a shield and that the real reason for his suspension is the publication of the cartoons.

“They know that if they attacked me based upon the cartoons themselves, then they’d look bad on free speech rights,” Gorton said. “Of course they don’t like that the cartoons had to be published. Somebody’s head has to roll on this issue and it has to be me.”

Prochaska said that the newsroom staff is not being honest about the reasons for the suspension and their reasons for going to the publisher. The night that he and Gorton worked on the cartoons and the editorial, the page was shown to the deputy editor, the night editor and both managing editors throughout the night, he said.

Weissman and Koch were managing editors at the time the cartoons were published.

“The night editor even assured me, ‘If the publisher tries to yank it, I’ll make sure it goes through,’” Prochaska said. “They were scared of the fallout. Our staff started turning on us once they started seeing the reaction.”

Koch said he saw the cartoons before they were published and objected to them running.

"We needed to do much more packaging," he said. "Knowing the newsroom attitude, it was futile to object."

A task force has been assembled to investigate how the cartoons were published in the first place and will make a recommendation to the Illini Media Company board of directors about what should happen with Gorton and Prochaska, according to the interim editors’ statement.

Gorton said that he believes the suspension will lead to his being fired and he has retained a lawyer, Junaid Afeef, a founding member of the Muslim Bar Association in Illinois and also one of the original members of the National Association of Muslim Lawyers.

“They want a certain decision,” Gorton said of the staff’s investigation. “If there’s an organization embroiled in a dispute, don’t you typically get outside unbiased investigators to investigate this?”

—by Ricky Ribeiro SPLC staff writer

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