Danish editor rejects resignation suggestion

The editor-in-chief of the newspaper whose cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed sparked a worldwide furore today said he had no plans to resign over the issue.

The statement by Carsten Juste, editor of the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, came after former Foreign Minister Uffe Ellemann-Jensen said on national radio that: “When an editor-in-chief admits he made an erroneous judgment … he should quit.”

In a brief reply on the daily’s website, Juste said: “I do not feel called … in that direction.”

Jyllands-Posten said on January 30 it regretted it had offended Muslims and apologised to them, but stood by its decision to print the cartoons, saying it was within Danish law.

Two days later, Juste said he would not have printed the cartoons had he foreseen the consequences.

Also today, Jens Kaiser, the chief editor for the broadsheet’s Sunday edition, said it had turned down five small cartoons of Jesus’ resurrection three years ago that had been sent in unsolicited.

Kaiser’s email to the cartoonist rejecting the drawings has been circulated to news media in recent days, apparently to question Jyllands-Posten’s commitment to free speech regardless of topic.

“I turned them down because they were not good, their quality was not good,” Kaiser said. “I have been Sunday editor for 18 years, and I can say that 90-95% of the unsolicited material we get is turned down.”

He refuted suggestions that, since the recent controversy over the Prophet drawings, “it looks like we have opted for a line to publish Mohammed drawings and not Jesus drawings”.

“We’re not,” Kaiser said, adding that he “should have been more forward, and said the cartoons would not be used because they are too bad”.

Instead, Kaiser said in the email to the rejected cartoonist that readers would not enjoy the drawings, which “will provoke an outcry”.

“Had I foreseen the Mohammed drawing controversy, I would not have written it that way,” he said.