The editor of the New York Times, Dean Baquet, took to social media on Friday to vigorously defend his paper’s decision not to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, calling a critic of the policy an “asshole”.

In France this week, 17 people died in and after an attack by Islamist terrorists on the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Three gunmen also died.



Marc Cooper, a journalism professor at University of Southern California at Annenberg, had called not running the pictures “absolute cowardice”.

“Dear Marc, appreciate the self righteous second guessing without even considering there might be another point of view,” Baquet said in a comment on Cooper’s Facebook page. “Hope your students are more open minded. Asshole.”

“Of course there is a second view,” Baquet said in another comment. “And I welcome it. But your note was thoughtless and arrogant. It didn’t invite argument. It invites so what you got [sic].”

“I welcome vigorous debate,” he said, “not righteous cheap shots.”

“Understand you disagree,” he added. “But there was a thoughtful discussion to be had. Next time I promise we will have it. But I bristle at arguments like those of [commenter Bernard] Fauchier who think it was a question of courage. It was not.”

“Thanks for the chance to exorcise my demons now. Dean.”

Cooper told the Guardian he did not know how he became Facebook friends with Baquet, and that the comment came as a surprise.

“I thought it was really silly,” Cooper said. “He has more important things to do [than] to be so thin-skinned, and to be so nasty, and so sensitive with somebody that he doesn’t really know.”

“If he wants to debate it with me,” Cooper added, “he’d be welcome.”

The New York Times later issued its own comment. “Dean responded passionately to an arrogant comment that seemed intended to provoke,” said a representative. “In the end, these are very difficult decisions and Dean made this one with great care, understanding that there would be people who disagreed – many of them reasonable and civil, some less so.”



The article Cooper’s post originally linked to was one in which the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, described the process by which Baquet reached his decision, which she wrote involved “seeking out the views of senior editors and reaching out to reporters and editors in some of the Times’ international bureaus”.

Baquet’s position on whether to publish the cartoons is one that the Guardian shares.