The right response to a deadly assault on free speech

'Attack on Freedom'; 'La Liberté assassinée'. Headlines like those in The Times and Le Figaro proclaim that the commando-style attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris on Wednesday was an attack on free speech itself. The murdered journalists and cartoonists were famous in France for their fearless mockery of all forms of power, intolerance and hypocrisy. They were killed because they dared to laugh about the founder of the Muslim religion too. What has changed after the targeted murder of those symbols of free speech and press freedom? The media in France and-everywhere, whether they like it or not, are now part of the story. The killers' motive seems beyond doubt: they shouted 'Allahu Akbar' and ' the prophet is avenged'. The consequences for the public are great, because a massacre in Paris with echoes of the devastating Mumbai attack of 2008 has been carried out in Europe and more such attempts must be expected. A media office, even one with some police protection, is an easy target for men shooting automatic weapons. France is a special case thanks to its ardent attachment to secularism. Charlie Hebdo and other media assert that anti-clerical tradition. Many young Muslims from France have gone to the Middle East to become jihadis. But the same is true of the UK, Belgium and other European countries. Risks are specific to journalists. So the risks are universal but also specific to journalists because their role is to question, expose and hold power of every sort to account. In Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East the targeted kidnapping and killings of journalists by Isis and other jihadi groups has forced international media to limit or abandon direct coverage from some conflict zones. Will the threat force our own media to self-censor at home?