Any Danes who can confirm this?

[jumpy]

This is more about what gets reported in the BBC news here in the UK and less about the actual story, before anyone starts ranting about Islam again.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=11114708&postcount=1

Can anyone from Denmark give me the gist of those articles and any backgound information?

After a bit of searching I found the following from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7251178.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7251378.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7247286.stm

Am I correct in thinking that there's not really an issue with the beeb reporting or are the news services just being cautious in their reporting over here in light of certain 'events' (all of which have already been discussed at length here in GT)?

[mapuc]

I have got a danish friend to translate what common people think
There may be some wrong spelling

"During the last week, following the second release of the Mohammed Cartoons around danish newspapers, Muslims, young aswell as old, has arissen from silence. The danish muslim minority demands respect for Islam. At the same time the wide masses of Denmark demands unlimited freedom of speach. The danish population will not tolerate restrictions of what is spoken, written or printed.
The most extreame islamic movement demonstraded against the cartoons, and at the same time, demanded sharia-laws and the conversion of denmark into an Islamic state.
Muslim Youth got the idea to torch cars and containers, this however grew worse. Several schools and public institutions, all over Denmark, has been burned. Police/firefighters has been working overtime arresting the arsonists and putting out the fires.

Note: Denmark will never put restrictions on freedom of speach! "


Markus

[Skybird]

Danish state has stopped giving protection to the death-threatened author:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,druck-536544,00.html

DRAWN OUT
Danish Caricaturist of Muhammad Fame Now Homeless

Two years ago Kurt Westergaard was in his Copenhagen home drawing pictures. One of them was of the Muslim prophet, Muhammad. Now Westergaard is homeless.

Draw a picture offensive to Muslim extremists, and you might find yourself without a roof. Ask Kurt Westergaard, one of the twelve Danish cartoonists whose autumn 2005 Muhammad caricatures lead to violent protests throughout the Muslim world. He was booted from his police-protected hotel room on Feb. 15 for being "too much of a security risk." And now the 73-year-old cartoonist and his wife are without a place to live.

Westergaard was forced to leave his actual residence in November after the Danish security and intelligence agency, PET, informed him of a "concrete" plan to murder him, according to the paper that originally published the cartoons, Jyllands-Posten. Westergaard and his wife have been living under police protection since.
PET had been gathering information about the plot for several months, leading to a Feb. 12 raid (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,534704,00.html) carried out in the western Danish city of Aarhus. Five suspects -- "people with a Muslim background," with both Danish and foreign citizenship -- were taken into custody. The Associated Press quoted PET as stating that the raids were intended "to prevent a terror-related murder...[and to do so] at an early phase to stop the planning."
In response to last week's arrest, a number of Danish newspapers republished the original cartoons the following day (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,535118,00.html). Among those reprinted, of course, was Westergaard's caricature: Muhammad with a lit bomb in his turban. "We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case," the Copenhagen paper Berlingske Tidende wrote, "and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend."
While protests in Pakistan saw Danish flags burned in response to the republishing of cartoons, reaction in the Danish Muslim community reveals how much attitudes have been tempered. "We are so unhappy about the cartoon being reprinted," said Imam Mostafa Chendid, head of the Islamic Faith Community. "[But] no blood was ever shed in Denmark because of this, and no blood will be shed. We are trying to calm people down, but let's see what happens. Let's open a dialogue." The Islamic Faith Community had led the protests in Copehagen in 2006.

Westergaard, however, has transformed fear for his life into anger at the entire situation. "Of course I fear for my life after the Danish Security and Intelligence Service informed me of the concrete plans of certain people to kill me," he said in a statement printed in Jyllands-Posten. "But I have turned my fear into anger and indignation."
The newspaper's editor, Flemming Rose, also the subject of death threats, told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a recent interview (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,534859,00.html) that, regardless of events, he does not fear for his life and that he will continue to speak out.
With reporting by Anna Reimann

They must not attempt to bring critics into misery - we can do that ourselves on their behalf. Meanwhile, Ayan Hirsi also is left stranded with no funds to come up for her protection. Netherlands do not help, France spend a lot of words and did not help, the US do not help, now she has adressed the EU. So far she received only words in return how solidaric one feels towards her. While one has not yet said No to her request for help, one already has given back her coat and indicated that the door through which she came is not locked.

[jumpy]

Thanks guys.
I was considering that the allegation of a bbc news blackout on this story was a bit of a misnomer; for all that I did not hear anything about it on television news or on the radio (I listen to bbc radio4 a lot), but I would have considered rioting in the streets and burning school(s) would have been of slightly more importance and would have possibly been more widespread in its reporting.
I know it's kind of 'old news' and I suspect there is a good deal of sentiment against making mountains out of molehills simply to make a story.

Looking through the lens of our media at world events lends itself to a certain bias certainly. It always shocks me at some of the firmly held beliefs of people in the UK who's level of sophisticated news intake is defined by papers like The Sun (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/) and to the lesser breast fixated readers of the Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/dailymail/home.html?in_page_id=1766) with a more of a 'home counties' approach to its readers, but a tabloid none the less. Which brings me back to the responsibilities of the press, free speech and the whole beginnings of this cartoon saga and how I respond to how news is portrayed and filtered to us.

Over the years I have appreciated that not everything is as it seems at first glance when dealing with complex issues and the way they are reported; I only have to look back to some of the comments on other forums regarding the initial shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Comments like "Got the bastard!" and "Pity there weren't any more they (police) could have slotted".
Given what had recently happened, these sorts of remarks are not altogether surprising, but they do offer an insight into the way people are influenced by newspaper headlines and events. After all, if we normal people (for want of a better description) can bay for the blood of a stranger given the right motivation, then it's no great leap to draw similar conclusions for those with a more radical disposition.
This fact surely cannot be lost on the establishment and its media outlets.

[TteFAboB]

Bias aside, there's nothing to report: it's no longer an extraordinary event, it's no longer news. It's routine, it's normal, it's what you are supposed to accept and tolerate most naturally, like rain or the day/night cycle.