This commentary from the Guardian's Kim Fletcher about whether many British papers self-censored by not publishing the highly controversial cartoons about the Muslim prophet Muhammad.

Some excerpts:

How do we resolve the row over newspaper publication of cartoons of the Prophet? Perhaps we should start with an apology. Many journalists on British newspapers dismiss their continental counterparts - possibly owing to our chronic inability to read foreign languages - as humourless and boring and ostentatiously politically correct. Their bravery in publishing those cartoons warms our hearts and makes us think again.

From our earliest days as cub reporters it is drilled into us that, outside of the law, nothing stops a paper printing what it likes. The quickest way to get a story from the magistrates courts into a local newspaper is to ask the reporter to keep it out.

So why didn't British newspapers pile in to show solidarity with Danes, French, Italians, Germans, Spanish, Dutch, Swiss and - bravest of the brave - Jordanians over this important issue of press freedom? The best Britain came up with was a web link in the Guardian directing curious readers to the cartoons. Shouldn't we at least have followed the lead of BBC and ITV news, which screened shots of the contentious foreign coverage in order to explain the row?

The attractive explanation for our failure to do so is that papers do not print things that their readers may find offensive. Andreas Whittam Smith, the co-founder and former editor of the Independent, told BBC viewers on Friday that this was an issue not of press freedom but of taste and responsibility.

The less attractive explanation is pure pragmatism. Do you want a protest greeting you next morning? Is it worth having production disrupted for the next few months? How will Muslim newsagents react to what you print? Freedom of the press is all very well, but newspapers are commercial operations. ...

I suspect the truth is that many British journalists feel uncomfortable with the accommodations we are already making, not because they think it is the role of a free press to cause gratuitous offence, but because we have accepted that a large group is to be treated with greater circumspection for fear of what it will do if we don't.