Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden threatened the European Union with grave punishment on Wednesday over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad in an audio recording. Bin Laden said the cartoons were part of a “crusade” in which he said Pope Benedict was involved.

Journalists all around the globe were stunned but unsure which side of this issue to take in their reports. Typically, journalists will sympathize with the person who is verbally attacked and condemn the attacker for partisanship.

“But this is the Pope,” said one anonymous journalist. “Now I know that Osama’s a really bad guy but…this is the Pope.”

Many journalists have written that the Pope is hardly a sympathetic character as he is responsible for the death of millions by his hard line stance on birth control which has incited the spread of AIDS worldwide as well as making some Catholic girls hard-to-get.

No word on where Osama stands on abortion and birth control but many journalists admire his anti-Bush stance on the War in Iraq.

Many journalists have resigned themselves to playing this story straight down the middle, something they don’t like to do. “How will people know what to think unless we tell them?” asked one concerned journalist.

One journalist said, “It’s the perfect storm of a story and we can’t do a thing with it. It’s King Kong vs. Godzilla. It’s Lex Luthor versus Hannibal Lecter…I just don’t know who to root for.”