Self-censorship adds to dullness of newspapers

Killed Cartoons

By David Wallis. W.W Norton. 260 pages. $15.95.

The American press has many problems: bottom line journalism, huge cuts in staffs, closing of foreign and domestic bureaus, entertainment over news, kowtowing to stockholders and bowing to advertisers.

But perhaps the biggest newspaper problem is self-censorship. Communist governments and dictatorships have overt censorship. American censorship is hidden. And that censorship is being done by gutless, third-rate editors who are usually white and Establishment to the core.

Nearly all American newspapers, including supposedly fearless alternative weeklies, refused to print the Danish caricatures of Mohammed that trigged worldwide Muslim outrage, death and destruction.

Doug Marlette of the Tulsa World is one of the best editorial cartoonists in America. He has received death threats for criticizing Islamic fundamentalists. Yet he pointed out that by suppressing the Mohammed cartoons the American media abdicated its responsibility to keep the public informed. He nailed it: “one of the low points in the history of American journalism.”

The liberal-media theory has been debunked countless times but the myth persists. “Killed Cartoons” provides still more proof that newspapers are not liberal and never will be.

Price Day, editor of the Baltimore Sun in the 1960s, used to say that the problem with newspapers is that no editors are being horsewhipped. It was his metaphorical way of saying that newspapers had become so dull that no one is offended by anything. Since Day’s time the situation has gotten only worse.

All the 92 censored editorial cartoons shown in the book should have been printed by the newspapers and magazines they were drawn for. An artist’s vision should never be squelched. But spinelessness, political correctness, squeamishness about the mildest sexual allusion, and supersensitivity to religious groups and minorities prevail over pungency.

As editor David Wallis writes: “Fear rather than fearlessness is the new reality in American newsrooms.”

One marvelous cartoon by Dennis Draughon was killed by the Scranton (Pa.) Times-Tribune in 1998. It pictured Matthew Shepard, Wyoming college student who was tortured and beaten to death because he was gay.

Shepard was bound to a fence, a pool of blood at his feet labeled hate crimes. The caption was from Luke: “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” The idiot editor said he was “uncomfortable comparing Shepard with Christ.”

Another great Draughon cartoon was spiked. It showed Bush speaking belligerently before flag-drapped coffins returned from Iraq: “BRING ‘EM ON!!” Another slain cartoon was drawn by M.G. Lord, former cartoonist of Newsday. It was a caricature of New York Cardinal John Law holding aloft a coat hanger instead of a crosier. Editor Wallis writes of the cartoon: it “brillantly captures the anti-abortion fervor of a prelate who demonized pro-choice supporters.”

Time magazine in 1997 vetoed a cover cartoon by Tim O‘Brien. “Biting” boxer Mike Tyson was portrayed as a pit bull, caged, with his jaw agape. Editors wrongly said it was racist.

Still another murder: a cartoon in 1998 by Rex Babin, then of the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union. It showed a man representing Big Tobacco speaking through a hole in his throat. As Wallis rightly asks: “Shouldn’t you really show the result of smoking in its most graphic way?”

A quick rundown of excellent drawings slain by stupid editors: a cartoon by Steve Kelley of the San Diego Union-Tribune because it showed a smidgen of teenager butt crack; a wonderful cartoon by Patrick O’Connor of the Los Angeles Daily News showing portraits of dictators supported by the United States; a cartoon by J.D. Crowe of the Mobile (Ala.) Register showing a hefty guy labeled Halliburton and captioned: “Another big league player bulked up on steroids”; a cartoon by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution with flag-draped coffins formed into the letters, “We Lied”; and the outrage of Scranton editors killing a Draughon cartoon showing a doctor putting his stethoscope on a patient’s wallet.

Cartoonist O’Connor points out that sometimes journalism must shock rather than soothe readers, even in the worst of times.

Thomas Nast, giant of 19^th century editorial cartooning in America, drew a grossly unfair cartoon of editor Horace Greeley shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth over the grave of Lincoln. But editorial cartoonists make no effort to be fair. If they did, they would lose all their explosiveness, all the cut and thrust of effective cartooning.

An awful lot of opinion page editors in America should be in another line of work--say, accounting. They certainly are not halting the flight of readers from newspapers.