Free speech proponent Mark Steyn scolded Western media on “The Kelly File” for being all bark and no bite in support of French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo following a brutal terrorist attack Wednesday that left 12 dead.

Steyn told Megyn Kelly the Western media needs to “man up” and not “retreat even further into self-censorship” in the aftermath of the massacre in Paris. The Canadian columnist also laid blame at the feet of the media for the killings, saying Charlie Hebdo was “forced to bear a burden” that other, more prominent outlets should have shared.

Steyn had some choice words for the New York Daily News after they blurred out the Charlie Hebdo cartoon of Muhammad. Steyn called the Daily News’ decision “absolutely disgraceful,” adding that the decision “dishonors the dead” by not showing the cartoons properly. Steyn also told Kelly that the Daily News make Muhammad seem as though he “entered the Witness Protection program.” 

STEYN: Yes, they were very brave. This was the only publication that was willing to publish the Muhammad — the Danish Muhammad cartoons in 2006 because they decided to stand by those Danish cartoonists. I’m proud to have written for the only Canadian magazine to publish those Muhammad cartoons. And it’s because The New York Times didn’t and because Le Monde in Paris didn’t, and The London Times didn’t and all the other great newspapers of the world didn’t. Only Charlie Hebdo and my magazine in Canada and a few others did. But they were forced to bear a burden that should have been more widely dispersed.

I see these candlelight vigils and everyone claiming suddenly to be for freedom of speech. I think one consequence of this is that a lot of people will retreat even further into self-censorship. The New York Daily News won’t even show–dishonors the dead in Paris by not even showing properly the cartoons. They pixelated Muhammad out of it so it looks like Muhammad has entered the witness protection program, but they left the hooked-nose Jew in and that exactly gets to the double standard here: You can say anything you like about Christianity, you can say anything you like Judaism. But these guys, everyone understands the message, that if you say anything about Islam, these guys will kill you. We will be retreating into a lot more self-censorship if the pansy-ified Western media doesn’t man up and decide to disperse the risk so they can’t kill one small, little French satirical magazine. They’ve gotta kill all of us.

The fact that The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune and the Toronto Globe and Mail, and The Irish Times and the Sunday Star Times in New Zealand didn’t publish them after people have been killed for them, and they’re actually a news story now. They’re not a cartoon. It’s not an artistic judgment. It’s not an aesthetic judgment, but the fact they won’t show you them after people have been killed for them, shows that we’re actually retreating, the media, which congratulates itself on its bravery as one of the most tedious institutions for handing out awards for bravery, far more than firemen or soldiers do. The fact they didn’t even have the courage to show these cartoons after they became a news story is why these brave men like Charlie Hebdo had to bear the burden almost single-handed. What the New York Daily News did is absolutely disgraceful and dishonors the dead.