Mark Steyn: 'A Lot of People Will Retreat Even Further Into Self-Censorship'

Charlie Hebdo satirical cartoon published in 2012.

(CNSNews.com) - Wednesday's terror attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris will make major Western newspapers even more fearful to say anything about Islam, conservative pundit Mark Steyn warned on Wednesday.

"I think one consequence of this is that a lot of people will retreat even further into self-censorship," Steyn told Fox News's Megyn Kelly.

In fact, several major newspapers on Wednesday, in reporting on the Paris attack, obscured the cartoon images of Mohammed published by Charlie Hebdo.

"The New York Daily News won't even show -- and it dishonors the dead in Paris by not even showing properly the cartoons. They pixilated Mohammed out of it, so it looks like Mohammed is into the witness protection program, but they left the hook-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 about Judaism, but these guys -- everybody understand the message that if you say something about Islam, these guys will kill you.

In this AP photo, <br />Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier displays the (cropped) front page of the magazine on Wednesday, September 19, 2012, the day it published provocative cartoons of Mohammed. Charbonnier was one of 12 people killed in Wednesday’s terror attack in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler, File)

"And we will be retreating into a lot more self-censorship if the pansified Western media doesn't man up and decide to disperse the risk. So they can't just kill one little small French satirical magazine, they've got to kill all of us."

Steyn noted that Charlie Hebdo was one of the few publications willing to reprint the Danish Mohammed cartoons in 2006: "I'm proud to have written for the only Canadian magazine to publish those cartoons," Steyn added.

"And it's because The New York Times didn't, and Le Monde in Paris didn't and the London Times didn't, and all the other great newspapers of the world didn't, that they (Charlie Hebdo) were forced to bear a burden that should have been more widely dispersed."

The cartoons have become a news story, especially after people have been killed for them, Steyn said: "But the fact that major newspapers still didn't have the courage to show these cartoons after they became a news story, is why these brave men at Charlie Hebdo had to bear the burden almost single-handed."