“What Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech. It was an abuse of free speech,” one Al Jazeera journalist wrote. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, an Al Jazeera spokesperson defended the internal debate.

A general view shows the newsroom at the headquarters of the Qatar-based Al Jazeera English-language channel in Doha in this February 7, 2011 photo.

REUTERS FADI AL-ASSAAD

The internal staff email chain began with a Jan. 8 email from Al Jazeera English's executive producer Salah-Aldeen Khadr, asking his reporters to interrogate whether the attack on the Charlie Hebdo newspaper was "really an attack on free speech" and whether the slogan "Je Suis Charlie/I Am Charlie" is "alienating."

Describing the incident as a "clash of extremist fringes," Khadr was highly critical of the Charlie Hebdo staff:

Defending freedom of expression in the face of oppression is one thing; insisting on the right to be obnoxious and offensive just because you can is infantile. Baiting extremists isn't bravely defiant when your manner of doing so is more significant in offending millions of moderate people as well. And within a climate where violent response—however illegitimate—is a real risk, taking a goading stand on a principle virtually no one contests is worse than pointless: it's pointlessly all about you.

In response, U.S.-based correspondent Tom Ackerman quoted a Jan. 7 piece from Ross Douthat in the New York Times :

If a large enough group of someone is willing to kill you for saying something, then it's something that almost certainly needs to be said, because otherwise the violent have veto power over liberal civilization, and when that scenario obtains it isn't really a liberal civilization any more….liberalism doesn't depend on everyone offending everyone else all the time, and it's okay to prefer a society where offense for its own sake is limited rather than pervasive. But when offenses are policed by murder, that's when we need more of them, not less, because the murderers cannot be allowed for a single moment to think that their strategy can succeed.

Doha-based reporter Mohamed Vall wrote that supporting Charlie Hebdo ran the risk of encouraging more killings. "And I guess if you encourage people to go on insulting 1.5 billion people about their most sacred icons then you just want more killings because as I said in 1.5 billion there will remain some fools who don't abide by the laws or know about free speech," Vall wrote.

Vall was also highly critical of the French satirical newspaper. "What Charlie Hebdo did was not free speech it was an abuse of free speech in my opinion, go back to the cartoons and have a look at them! It' snot [sic] about what the drawing said, it was about how they said it."



"I condemn those heinous killings, but I'M NOT CHARLIE," Vall wrote.

The network's Paris correspondent, Jacky Rowland, then responded, reminding her colleagues of the hashtag their network had promoted in the wake of the arrest and jailing of three Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt:

Dear all



We are Aljazeera. So, a polite reminder:



#journalismisnotacrime



Kind regards

Jacky

Rowland's email prompted this all-caps response from "roving reporter" Omar Al Saleh:

First i condemn the brutal killing. But I AM NOT CHARLIE.

JOURNALISM IS NOT A CRIME

INSULTISM IS NOT JOURNALISM

AND NOT DOING JOURNALISM PROPERLY IS CRIME

REUTERS FADI AL-ASSAAD

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