Both the Sacramento Bee and the Washington Post attempted explanations in their respective ombudsman columns, as to why they printed the Tom Toles' cartoon and chose to NOT print any of the Danes Newspaper's cartoons.

From the Sacramento Bee's  "Feedback"  column written by Armando Acuna, the Bee's editors took their advice from former Bee employee Howard Weaver:

"Given the state of the country, the world, the huge fissure between fundamentalist Islam and Western culture ... conditions were such that it raised the bar" for publication, Howard Weaver said. "[The cartoons were] at least as offensive as a vile, racist slur."

As for the Washington Post column writer Debrorah Howell, she offers the following reasons from Washington's leading newspaper:

Executive Editor Len Downie made the decision, consulting with other top editors. The issue, he said, is one of journalistic judgment, not courage. Downie said, "This newspaper vigorously exercises its freedom of expression every day. In doing so, we have standards for accuracy, fairness and taste that our readers have come to expect from The Post. We decided that publishing these cartoons would violate our standards. This has not prevented us from reporting about them and the controversy in great detail in many stories over several days."

Yet, BOTH newspapers DID run (defended running/printing) the Tom Toles cartoon that is pictured in this blog posting. If their defense is "not to provoke", to "insight" or to "offend"...then they are hypocritical at best by printing the Toles smear. Here is the enlarged Toles cartoon for better viewing.