Charlie Hebdo editors: 'We are not naive'

At a panel convened in New York to discuss the French magazine’s award from PEN for courage, its editors say it is power they mean to provoke, not religion

“The thing that surprised me the most,” Charlie Hebdo’s editor-in-chief Gérard Biard told an audience on Tuesday morning, “was the bells of Notre-Dame that rang for us.”

He was speaking on a panel at the Arthur L Carter journalism school at New York University. The French satirical weekly is to receive the PEN American Center’s Toni and James C Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage award at a gala as part of the PEN World Voices festival. And the honour has kicked up a ruckus among some the novelists, journalists, and literary writers who form PEN’s large and diverse membership. (Full disclosure: this reporter is a member of the PEN American Center.)

Continue reading...