In an uncommon show of unity, the world’s press – and many of its people, whether online or in vigils in capital cities – have stood together to condemn utterly Wednesday’s murderous attack on the staff of the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine. As we argued on Wednesday, this was not just an assault on the journalists killed: the assassins’ bullets were aimed squarely at free speech itself. For that reason, there is no place we can stand except by Charlie Hebdo.

But how is that solidarity best expressed? As the Guardian’s Martin Rowson explains on these pages, the French magazine is determined to publish next week and beyond. To do that, it will need money and help. Rowson plans to donate a drawing and urges his fellow cartoonists to do the same. We applaud that effort. Indeed, the Guardian Media Group has announced a donation of £100,000 towards sustaining the publication.

Some, though, are looking for other shows of support. In social media, the call has been loud – and aimed at several British newspapers, including this one – to take a stand by publishing the very images that made Charlie Hebdo a target. For the most vociferous, republishing a sample of the magazine’s usual fare, which the Guardian has already done, is not enough: they insist that true defenders of free speech would reprint Charlie Hebdo’s depictions of the prophet Muhammad, especially the crudest, most scatological examples.

That case is straightforward. Since these are the images the gunmen wanted to stop, the surviving free press is obliged to deny the killers that victory. No other gesture can show that we refuse to be cowed by their crime. By repeating Charlie Hebdo’s action, we would demonstrate our resistance to the edict the terrorists sought to enforce on pain of death. We show that Charlie Hebdo was not alone.

There is an appealing simplicity to that stance, but it rests on faulty logic. The key point is this: support for a magazine’s inalienable right to make its own editorial judgments does not commit you to echo or amplify those judgments. Put another way, defending the right of someone to say whatever they like does not oblige you to repeat their words.

Alan Rusbridger: Charlie Hebdo must not be wiped out

Each and every publication has a different purpose and ethos. Charlie Hebdo is not the Guardian or the New York Times, nor is it the Daily Mail or Private Eye. The animating intention behind its work was to satirise and provoke in a distinctive voice, one that would not sit easily in other publications. Other publications can defend – and defend absolutely – the necessary diversity of press voices along with an editor’s right to offend. But the best response is not to be forced to speak in a different voice. The Guardian felt that at the time of the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy, and we feel it now. As Simon Jenkins argued on these pages on Wednesday, terrorists’ chief goal is to make us change our behaviour. It’s best to deny them that victory.

Of course there are tensions between an absolute right of free speech and the beliefs of most Muslims, including perhaps the likes of Ahmed Merabet, the policeman killed in Wednesday’s assault. But that is not the principal conflict here. The real clash is between free speech and a tiny number of jihadist murderers. We do not have to alter our editorial values to be on the right side of that divide.