The 6 Cartoons a US Newspaper Doesn’t Want You to See
June
7, 2018 at 12:23 pm
Written
by Anti-Media
News Desk
(FAIR) The
work of Rob Rogers, longtime political cartoonist for the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette,
has been notably absent from his paper’s opinion page during this
past week. Aside from a cartoon criticizing the trade war posted on
Tuesday, June
5,
the most recent of Rogers’ drawings appeared last Thursday, May
24.
So
where was Rogers all of last week? He did not simply “have the day
off,” as printed in last Tuesday’s issue of the Post-Gazette.
Keith
Burris, the Post-Gazette’s editorial director since
March, when it merged its editorial board with the co-owned
Toledo Blade, refused to publish six of Rogers’
cartoons in a row. Four were directly critical of President Donald
Trump, and two alluded to racism.
Despite
not being published in the Post-Gazette, Rogers continued
posting these cartoons on Twitter, as he does with all of
his work.
May
25’s cartoon portrayed
a referee calling penalties for exercising free speech, disrespecting
the troops and eliciting Trump tweetstorms, in light of the NFL’s
announcement of their new
rule dictating
players must stand during the national anthem:
On
May 30, he criticized the
NFL again, joking it was closed for “racial ignorance training”
in light of Starbucks closing many of its locations for racial
sensitivity training:
His
Memorial Day sketch depicted
a caricature of Trump placing a wreath on the grave of Truth,
Honor and the Rule of Law:
On
May 31, Rogers satirized Roseanne
Barr’s claim that
her racist tweets were a result of her taking sleeping pills:
…while
on June 3, Rogers satirized Trump’s
claim he could pardon
himself in
the Russia investigation:
None
of these cartoons appeared in the Post-Gazette, despite
Rogers being the paper’s full-time staff political cartoonist.
Burris
frequently writes in support of Trump for the Post-Gazette’s
opinion section. In “Can Roseanne Restore Our Sense of Proportion?”
(4/8/18),
Burris referred to “Trump-hate” as “a mania, a fever, a hissy
fit by the self-anointed guardians of all that is good and
enlightened in America.” He argued:
God
help you if you actually like some of what Mr. Trump does and dislike
other things that he does or says. You are, in the words of a church
lady who confronted me one day, “complicit.”
Burris wrote
an editorial in January (1/15/18)
headlined “Reason as Racism,” which defended Trump’s
description of developing nations as “shithole countries,” and
likened being called racist today with being labeled a Communist
during the McCarthy Era.
The paper’s publisher, John Robinson Block of Block Communications, which owns both the Post-Gazette and the Blade, insisted that the piece be printed, according to Post-Gazette reporter Michael A. Fuoco (CJR, 1/22/18). Fuoco went on to describe the dread he and the other newsroom employees felt in the wake of the piece’s publishing.
Block
is an open Trump
supporter,
who (accompanied by Burris) met with Trump on his private plane in
2016 following a campaign rally, tweeting it was “a more than
memorable experience” (9/22/16).
He also suggested at a community forum on racism in 2013
(Toledo Blade, 9/17/13)
that people of color should “pull themselves up by their
bootstraps” like they did in the “old days”.
The Post-Gazette also came under fire in Nov. 2016 for their piece, “A Guide to Decide: Twelve Tests to Choose Between Clinton and Trump,” which was read by many as a crypto-endorsement of Trump.
The Post-Gazette also came under fire in Nov. 2016 for their piece, “A Guide to Decide: Twelve Tests to Choose Between Clinton and Trump,” which was read by many as a crypto-endorsement of Trump.
Burris’
article was so incendiary that the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh,
which noted it does not, as a rule, comment on editorials, felt the
need to denounce the piece, calling it “repugnant.” One hundred
and fifty of the Post-Gazette’s newsroom employees
signed the letter.
The
paper did not publish the Guild’s
letter,
or another signed
by 23 Post-Gazette staff
members (CJR, 1/22/18)–omissions
that seem to foreshadow the paper’s new editorial director’s
distaste for dissenting opinion.
The Blade,
however, ran Burris’ response to the backlash against his piece in
a column headlined “The Left’s War on Thought” (1/26/18).
Whena Philadelphia
Inquirer reporter
(6/4/18)
reached out to Rogers for comment, Rogers said he was unable to speak
of the incident, but confirmed he was still employed by the paper.
The piece also noted Burris did not respond.
This
morning (6/6/18),
in a series of three tweets, Rogers thanked his readers and
colleagues for their support, but announced he would be taking some
time off from the Post-Gazette while
the issue is being resolved. “I love what I do,” he tweeted:
Now, more than ever, I believe in the power of satire and the public dialogue that it can create. Thank you for being part of that dialogue.
The
paper ran the latest Rogers cartoon without an acknowledgement of the
cartoonist’s absence over the past week. Rogers’ supporters
denounced the censorship with comments on the paper’s website like:
So, the Toledo editors CENSORED Rogers’ cartoons!!!!!!!!!!!! Where are we? 1930’s Berlin! This Fascist Conservative Brown Shirt stuff is VERY DANGEROUS.
and:
It’s so stupid that the PG board would weaken the paper and insult we readers by suppressing Rob Rogers’ great work.
Newsday cartoonist
Matt Davies came out in support of Rogers on Twitter(6/5/18),
saying good editors publish that which they disagree with. This would
seem to echo the lessons Burris himself (Post-Gazette, 3/4/18)
says he learned from John Craig, the editor who first hired him for
paper, who said that a good journalist “has no side or tribe,”
and that an opinion writer “must have roots but no permanent
alliances.”
Local
outlets like the Inquirer and CBS
Pittsburgh (6/4/18),
as well as CNN
Money (6/4/18),
have picked up on the story of Rogers’ censorship, but it has yet
to appear on larger national sites like the New
York Times or NPR.
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