Dalton covered a similar policy of the Associated Press last night, noting that the wire service had no problem publishing photos of burnt Bibles the year before. It would appear that we have another case of medium double standard.

The New York Times says it won’t run photos of the Koran burnings this Saturday. Why? Because apparently photos of the Koran burning aren’t relevant enough to a story about the Koran burnings.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said in an e-mail message that the newspaper had “no policy against publishing things that might offend someone — lots of people are offended by lots of things — but we try to refrain from giving widespread offense unless there is some offsetting journalistic purpose.”

“A picture of a burning book contributes nothing substantial to a story about book-burning, so the offense seems entirely gratuitous,” Mr. Keller continued. “The freedom to publish includes the freedom not to publish.”

A picture of the actual event adds nothing to a story about the event. Since when has that been the case?

Here’s a story on the Times’ front page right now. It’s actually related to the planned Koran burnings, showing Afghans violently reacting to the possibility of some kook in Florida burning a few Korans. (They’re so peaceful!)

How does the picture of some random Afghan yelling at the camera add more to the accompanied story than a photo of the Koran burning would add to its related story? It doesn’t. The story would be fine without the photo. Yet it’s run.

Allahpundit points out that this isn’t the first time the Times has refused to print images offensive to Muslims. The paper wouldn’t even run the Mohammad cartoons to show Americans what the global violence was all about. Were the actual cartoons not sufficiently contributory to a story about violence sparked by the said cartoons? Please.

And yet, the same paper chose to print images of the Virgin Mary painted in elephant dung. And the image wasn’t even printed alongside a story about the “artwork”! It was a story related to the violence sparked by the Mohammad cartoons.

Printing the Mohammad cartoons next to the Mohammad cartoons story? Not acceptable. Printing an image of the Virgin Mary painted in elephant dung next to a story related to the Mohammad cartoons story? Let’s go to print.

Bill Keller and his ilk aren’t barring  publication of the photos because they’re unnecessary for the story. The photos are barred from publication because Keller & Company are afraid of the potential violent Muslim response to the paper publishing photos of burning Korans. In short, they’re chickenshit.

Which is fine. I can understand fearing Muslim violence and not wanting to endanger your employees. But then be honest, and, more importantly, don’t hold a double-standard when it comes to publishing offensive religious images.

You need to read the final paragraph at Hot Air to see how the media — both domestic and global — have been hyping the book burning for months. Now the same outlets want to kill this monster they’ve constructed by blacking out coverage of the event. Too late, folks.

More: As some commenters at Hot Air are pointing out, since when has the New York Times been opposed to running needlessly provocative images? I seem to recall pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib when the text story would have sufficed. But that only endangered the lives of our troops rather than editors at the Times. So the Times ran the images.