The New York Times Nixes Political Cartoons

After a brief flirtation with political cartoons, The New York Times has decided to stop publishing them.  For some reason, the paper was against the idea for decades.  They only started using political cartoons about a year ago.  Now they have been pressured to stop, and have decided it is too risky, too easy to offend.  Other newspapers may follow suit.

As described here: “A dog with a Jewish star around its neck and the face of a Jewish leader, leading a blind, yarmulke-wearing U.S. President would be standard fare for the notorious Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer, and for its modern descendants.  Unfortunately the New York Times must now be counted among those descendants. Just days after the Times published an op-ed falsely claiming Jesus was a Palestinian, the New York Times International Edition placed this cartoon on their op-ed page, depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog leading a blind U.S. President Donald Trump:

The cartoon is by the award-winning (aren’t they all) Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Antunes Moreira, and was distributed by the New York Times News Service and Syndicate.  After a wave of criticism – perhaps among the earliest was a tweet from the left-wing site Jewish Worker – the Times removed the image and tweeted this statement:

XXXX makes some good points in his recent article, which I will quote below with some of the cartoons I like best – I wish I could use even more – such cartoons have existed for a long time….

The end of political cartoons at The New York Times

by Patrick Chappatte

“Last week, my employers told me they’ll be ending in-house political cartoons as well by July. I’m putting down my pen, with a sigh: that’s a lot of years of work undone by a single cartoon – not even mine – that should never have run in the best [most biased and left-wing] newspaper of the world….

I’m afraid this is not just about cartoons, but about journalism and opinion in general. We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in.

[Dr. Seuss was very political – anti isolationist and has strong social opinions too.]

….If cartoons are a prime target it’s because of their nature and exposure: they are an encapsulated opinion, a visual shortcut with an unmatched capacity to touch the mind.

That’s their strength, and their vulnerability. They might also be a revealor of something deeper. More than often, the real target, behind the cartoon, is the media that published it.