Friday, June 15, 2018

In Case You Didn't Hear

The cartoonist who created this image (among a number of others that were repressed by his editor) was just fired from his job:


Rob Rogers worked for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette until yesterday. He had been there for 25 years and has been a Pulitzer finalist. The paper's editorial director, appointed by its Trump-supporting publisher, said he

did not “suppress” Mr. Rogers’ cartoons but that Mr. Rogers was unwilling to “collaborate” with him about his work and ideas.
Collaborate? Is that what political cartoonists do, generally? Quoting from the same story (from the Post-Gazette):
Mr. Burris [the editorial director] began overseeing the Post-Gazette’s editorial pages in March after the paper’s owner, Block Communications, combined them with the editorial pages of its other newspaper, The Blade of Toledo, Ohio. He was formerly the editorial page editor for The Blade and now splits his time between the two cities.

He acknowledged that he is “more conservative” than past editorial page editors and that even prior to Mr. Trump’s election in 2016, the owners of the newspaper had been trying “to right the ship” to reflect less liberal views.

Mr. Rogers said he began to feel “a lot more pushback” about his work after Mr. Trump announced his run for office in 2015.

But few of his cartoons were killed until Mr. Burris took over the editorial page, he said. Since March, nine cartoon ideas and 10 finished cartoons were killed, he said.
The First Amendment doesn't apply here, of course, since that's about government intervention. But this is still worth exclaiming over. Personally I can't get over the part where the editorial director complained that Rogers's cartoons weren't funny enough.

Hahahahahahahaha.....

1 comment:

Michael Leddy said...

As you probably know, this cartoonist’s story has made The New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/cartoonist-rob-rogers-trump-fired.html

But I read about it here first. :)